After Pearl Harbor, 'dimout' rules darkened Christmas in coastal Delaware
With Christmas fast approaching, coastal residents suffered decorating whiplash.
On Dec. 18, 1942, the Delaware Coast News announced. “Lewes people are grimly preparing to ‘ossify’ their Christmas jubilation. They won’t be getting out last year’s string of colored lights to string over their doorways. There won’t be any floodlight illuminations of facades along historic Pilottown Road, Shipcarpenter Street and Savannah Road.”
Lewes was a town lit by oil lamps and candles until 1902, when electricity came to town. The town’s street lights were quickly electrified, but it took time to convince all of the town’s residents to wire their homes for electricity.
One problem was that the newfangled power was not all that dependable. In 1943, Mayor Thomas H. Carpenter nostalgically recalled, “Our first (electric) plant of 41 years ago consisted of a small dynamo … If the dynamo needed adjustment, as it frequently did, the plant signaled the townspeople by dimming the lights two or three times, and then everybody rushed for candles and coal oil lamps. We saved a lot of money each month because on moonlit nights, we didn’t turn the streetlights on at all.”
Eventually, electricity was not only used for light, but it was also used for a host of other home appliances.
In 1927, the Wilmington Sunday Morning Star commented, “Electrical heating pads replace the old-time hot bottles. There’s the percolator, the waffle iron, the broiler, the toaster, sewing machine, curling iron, bottle warmers, heaters, pressers and ironers, vibrators, egg beaters, hair dryers, violet ray machine (a popular, but useless, home medical instrument), fans, ventilators — in fact, there’s an electrical device for practically every home use.”
By the 1930s, residents of Lewes decorated their homes during the holidays with electric lights in a competition to win prizes (toasters, heating pads, and waffle irons) offered by the Board of Public Works.
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To encourage the use of electric lights, the Delaware Coast News reported on Dec. 20, 1935, “The Board of Public Works, in co-operation with merchants of Lewes, are giving all their customers that use electric current a Christmas present of a four-cent flat rate per kilowatt, for all electricity they use during the month of December. The one dollar and fifty cent minimum rate remaining the same.
"This reduced rate is given for the purpose of giving all users of electricity an opportunity to illuminate and decorate their homes and help beautify the town during the Christmas season without the usual extra cost.”
The result was that Lewes homes were aglow inside and out during the Christmas season; but in 1942, that all changed.
Three weeks before Christmas on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and catapulted the United States into World War II. A month after Christmas, coastal Delaware began nighttime “blackout” exercises which required that no lights could be allowed to shine outside of buildings.
The blackout restrictions were only in effect during the exercise, but the presence of German submarines in Delaware waters prompted the institution of permanent “dimout” regulations.
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Windows facing the ocean were required to have their shades pulled at night. Businesses erected curtains and light baffles at doorways. At night, police patrolled coastal roads to ensure that cars used only their parking lights.
During the holiday season, Christmas lights were lit only behind blacked-out doorways and windows. In contrast to previous years, the streets of coastal towns during the Christmas holidays were dark, and the Delaware Coast News commented, “Moonlight nights are a godsend.”
Principal sources:
Delaware Coast News, Jan. 5, 1934; Jan. 1, 1935; Dec. 20, 1935; Dec.18, 1942; Feb. 26, 1943.
Sunday Morning Star, May 1, 1927.