BAN ON CHRISTMAS

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11030, 31 December 1928, Page 2

BAN ON CHRISTMAS

‘OFFENSIVE SPECTACLE.’

Because the prohibition of Christmas shopwindow displays was widely ignored, says the Riga correspondent of the London Times, the Soviet authorities inflicted heavy fines and threatened more drastic penalties if fines were ineffective. Soviet newspapers declare that it is incomprehensible that State-own-ed shops and co-operative stores should have accumulated great stocks of goods specially associated with Christmas, and decorated their windows with Christmas festoons, and the Government is determined to terminate “this offensive spectacle,” Curiously enough, factories were to close on Christmas Day, workers refusing to alter the date of their holiday, but the authorities had warned them that it would be illegal to celebrate Christmas, either according to the old or new calendar. FOOD SUPPLY BUNGLE: According to the Moscow correspondent of the London Daily News, th e sudden and acute bread shortage was partly due to falls of snow, which were hindering transport, and causing the longest queues since the introduction of the new economic policy.

The co-operative shops on one day recently sold out by 7 a.m. The crowd waited hours with the temperature at zero, and then beseiged private bakeries and smashed windows, after which the secret police, with the .assistance of the co-opera-tive managers, established an urgent tribunal to punish the “culprit officials” who had been responsible for th e shortage within two days. Moscow carters and cabmen are feeding their horses on bread, because oats cost ‘2ls for 361 b.