Sagebrush Savior: A Remarkable 1943 Hanford Christmas Tale

A friend and I were talking the other day while out to breakfast about Christmas. Of course the subject of Christmas trees came up.

A Hanford worker came up with a unique Christmas tree solution

My friend told me about a woman named Jane Jones Hutchins, who was featured at Atomicheritage.org on Voices of the Manhattan Project. The gist of the story was that there weren't any Christmas trees.

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In 1943, Hutchins and a group of co-workers planned a holiday party. They went out to the desert and brought back a sagebrush to decorate. Can you imagine? No Christmas tree. The sagebrush looked beautiful. Life was hard for a 22-year old away from home for Christmas for the first time.

Credit: Atomicheritage.org

Jane Jones Hutchins' life story is is pretty amazing! She arrived in Pasco in 1943 from a small town in Kansas. Upon arrival, she heard about Hanford and hopped a bus out there where she got a job immediately. You can read more about Jones Hutchins' Hanford experiences here.

I can't help but wonder what she might think of modern Christmas trees, especially with some of the wild trends that we come up with today, like the chicken nugget Xmas tree.

LOOK: What Christmas was like the year you were born

To see how Christmas has changed over the last century, Stacker explored how popular traditions, like food and decorations, emerged and evolved from 1920 to 2021 in the U.S. and around the world.

Gallery Credit: Stacker