Berkeley, a Look Back: Christmas 1925 featured several church services
Christmas week events in Berkeley a century ago included a program of holiday music played on the Campanile bells on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and numerous services at local churches, including traditional Christmas Eve midnight services.
The Berkeley Daily Gazette reported that the December 1925 days would be “essentially a home festival” with people gathering for private rather than public events. However, hundreds of people did go on organized Christmas Eve and Day caroling. Local weather was fair and moderate with light winds from the south.
All public offices and UC Berkeley were closed (classes had ended on Dec. 8 that year), and almost all Berkeley stores were closed “after a strenuous business season covering the past six weeks.” The Berkeley Downtown Association ran ads thanking people for shopping locally.
Someone broke into three Berkeley homes on Dec. 23 but was apparently a “sentimental burglar who refused to steal Christmas presents.” He unwrapped all of them, though, presumably to see what they contained.
A Berkeley man dressed as Santa Claus walked into a house at 371 61st Street early on Christmas Day morning and was “taken for a burglar and roughly handled.” When police were called they discovered he was due at a home with the same street number but one block over and took him there, with apologies made all around.
A 7-year-old girl living on the 1000 block of Alcatraz Avenue ran across the street Christmas morning to show a friend a new doll and was hit by a car. The motorist drove her to Berkeley General Hospital, where staff “found she was only suffering from minor bruises.” The same driver then took her back home. The doll also survived.
Fire danger: Berkeley’s fire chief on Dec. 23,1925, urged locals to be cautious of flammable Christmas trees and decorations, which could become “death traps for their loved ones.”
Among the things he warned the public about were “the use of lighted candles on Christmas trees, cheap electrical playthings, toys requiring alcohol, gasoline or kerosene, together with poorly constructed motion picture machines which use highly inflammable film.”
“The Chief advises the use of metal tinsel, flake asbestos and powdered mica for snow effects, instead of paper clippings and cotton” as well as “several buckets of water be kept at hand, or better still, a fire extinguisher should be readily available.”
Suggesting asbestos for interior decoration seems very odd today. Six small chimney fires on Christmas Day at Berkeley homes were reported.
Liquor raid: “Several pint bottles of mule whisky” were confiscated Dec. 23, 1925, by police from a home at 1227 Gilman St. Officers had observed people coming and going and entered the home with a warrant. They found liquor in a hen house, where chickens were cackling over whisky bottles that had apparently been placed in their nests for hiding.
Movies: The “Wizard of Oz” was playing at Berkeley Lorin Theater on Christmas 1925 but not the familiar Judy Garland version. The 1925 film, which the Gazette said “is actually deserving of the name ‘all star,’ ” featured comedian Larry Semon as the Scarecrow, his new wife as Dorothy and actress Mary Carr as Dorothy’s mother, “the greatest mother of the screen.” Oliver Hardy was the “Tin Woodsman.”
Street widening: Members of the city’s Planning Commission advised property owners and merchants in Berkeley’s Elmwood district that setting new buildings back 6 feet from the property line would be wise so as to allow a 52-foot width of College Avenue.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.