Train Ride Home Took Lawyer on Journey Toward Writing Book About Christmas 1945
Needing a break after a workday spent on white-collar insurance fraud defense matters in New York City, Matthew Litt started reading printouts of archived 1945 newspaper articles on his ride home on the subway, years ago.
A politics major in college, the now-32-year-old New Jersey lawyer says he didn’t even consider reading about current news to relax. “I was working long hours as an attorney … and I tried to think of what I thought was the happiest time in American history,” he tells the ABA Journal. The correct period to pinpoint, he decided, was Christmas of 1945, just after World War II had ended.
Although the world was facing even more serious problems, it seemed, than it is now–including severe housing and job shortages at home in the U.S., worse situations abroad, and a fear that the next major global conflict could likely occur at any time, perhaps involving nuclear war–there were also “just amazing stories and real powerful emotion going on,” says Litt.
In the euphoria after the end of the war, “even people who were in jails were celebrating Christmas in just these elaborate unusual ways,” he says. Some veterans reportedly were released simply because of their history of military service. And those in charge of American prisons arranged home-style meals for those who remained behind bars, even spending their own money on special treats. “No one was left out.”
Litt should know: His reading project, which included hundreds of newspapers from throughout the country, eventually evolved into something considerably bigger.
Increasingly interested in his topic, Litt not only arranged to interview of elderly residents of nursing homes with first-hand knowledge of Christmas 1945 but wrote a book about the subject. Christmas, 1945–The Story of the First Christmas After the Second World War is to be released in May by the History Publishing Company. However, Litt, who also created a business to help individuals write their own biographies, says he isn’t expecting to give up his day job practicing law anytime soon.
After finishing up with his last position a little over a week ago he is to start a new job on Monday at a law firm in Mount Laurel, N.J., he tells the ABA Journal.
His legal background gave him “a little bit of instant credibility” in the publishing industry “because they believe that means you can write,” he says, chuckling. He also credits his wife, Erin, with handling as much as possible to free him up to work on his book despite the demands of her own job as an elementary teacher and, now, their baby son, Max.
Although his law practice hasn’t changed as a result of the experience of writing the book, it has served as an invitation for colleagues to open up about their own dreams in life, Litt says.
Many tell him that they would also like to write a book and, Litt says, it’s not as difficult to do so as many might think.
The hardest part was “just kind of gathering the audacity to take the first step, to put yourself out there, to go a little bit out of your comfort zone and try something new,” he says. But once he’d decided on a subject and begun work “the momentum just really built on itself.”
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