The Ardennes Forest was not on the Allies’ radar.

The seventy-five-mile stretch of heavy Belgian woods wasn’t perceived as having any strategic significance.

So, in late 1944, they sent four inexperienced and battle-worn American divisions there for rest.

The mistake in judgment was made clear early on the morning of December 16, 1944, when 200,000 German troops and 1,000 tanks mounted a surprise assault.

Taking advantage of fog, deep snow and record-cold temperatures, the Germans intended to drive through the forest and reach the English Channel.

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Lincoln’s Last Christmas, 1864.

From what we can tell, it seems to have been a good one.

The year had brought more Union victories than defeats, and General Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea had succeeded in cutting the South in two.

Sherman had captured the City of Savannah on December 21 and presented it to the President as a Christmas gift.

And the City of Washington had celebrated with a 300-gun salute.

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It is December 10, 1856.

Abraham Lincoln is speaking at a Republican dinner in Chicago, four weeks after the Republican presidential candidate, John Frémont, lost the election.

And Lincoln has a warning for the new president, who did not receive a majority of the vote.

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When ‘big government’ works.

It is 1935.

Five hundred thousand men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five are employed in “Roosevelt’s Tree Army,” the nickname given to the Civilian Conservation Corp.

They live in 2,900 military-style camps across the country run by General Douglas MacArthur and staffed by Army Reserve officers.

For doing heavy manual labor on government-owned land they receive $30 per month, with most being sent home to their families.

It is an intense, life-changing experience.

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Reading the paper on December 7, 1942, the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The US Army now has one million troops stationed in sixty-five nations or islands around the globe.

The Chief of the US Army in Hawaii predicts that Japan will strike the islands again ‘when circumstances permit.’

But he warns that his men “are impatient for action” and such an attack will be ‘repelled with disastrous Japanese losses.’

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It is 1933, the bottom of the Depression.

A quarter of the nation’s workers are unemployed.

More than half of the elderly are destitute.

Herbert Hoover’s reliance on charity to provide for millions in need has failed.

And FDR’s promise of a “New Deal” for Americans has swept him into the White House.

Now, people are writing to ask for help.

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It is March 1915.

And, American newspaper reporter Phil Rader has written a personal account of the Christmas Truce of 1914 for United Press International.

Rader was one of a hundred Americans who had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in 1914.

On Christmas Day 1914, he was in the trenches of Northern France.

“We had been in the trenches for twenty days facing that strip of land, forty-five feet wide, between our trenches and that of the Germans,

that terrible No-man’s land, dotted with dead bodies, crisscrossed by tangled masses of barbed wire.

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It is December 4, 1863.

First Lady Mary Lincoln has received a brief telegram from her husband while staying at New York’s Metropolitan Hotel.

“All going well,” he had said.

Mrs. Lincoln was concerned about his health and had telegrammed him earlier in the day:

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It is December 3, 1960, the opening night for the musical “Camelot” at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre.

The show will run for 873 performances.

The play tells the story of King Arthur, Queen Guenevere and Lancelot with Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet in the leading roles.

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It is April 12, 1961, and President Kennedy, in his third month in office, is holding a press conference.

He begins by noting the day’s historical significance:

“Today is the sixteenth anniversary of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” he says.

“It is also the anniversary of the announcement that a vaccine has been discovered to prevent paralytic polio.”

Then and now, FDR was the most recognized polio victim.

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