Christmas in 2001 was unlike any most people in the United States had ever experienced.
The country continued trying to understand what happened just a few months earlier, on Sept. 11.
At Ground Zero, recovery workers continued to search for the bodies of victims.
“There’s still a lot of people we have to look for,” then-Sgt. John Cafarella told the Associated Press at the time. Cafarella told the AP he had missed Christmas morning with his three children to start work at 6 a.m.
Nearby, a large tent was staffed with Salvation Army volunteers who served Christmas dinner. That dinner consisted of prime rib, turkey with apple gravy, glazed ham, twice-baked potatoes, green beans with almonds and yams.
Then-BBC correspondent Peter Gould said “the nation seems more determined than ever to celebrate the traditions of the festive season.”
At the time, Gould wrote that he walked by a fire station and noticed that its fire trucks were parked on the street.
“We’re having our children’s Christmas party today,” one of the firefighters told Gould. The station lost 15 firefighters, many of them fathers.
The Rockefeller Center tree was adorned with red, white and blue lights that year. First Lady Laura Bush and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani lit the tree.
“As we remember the loved ones lost and reflect on the spirit and courage that New Yorkers have shown in abundance, let us be thankful for our family, our friends and our great country,” Bush said at the event. “America loves New York.”
In what likely was a precursor to the bastardized levels of security we deal with today, security measures for the tree lighting were tight for the time.
”We definitely had to give more thought this year to the ambience and security of the ceremony,” Jerry I. Speyer of Tishman Speyer Properties, co-owner of Rockefeller Center, told the New York Times at the time.
Even the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — celebrating its 75th anniversary that year — served as a moment of healing and normalcy. First responders marched in the parade carrying two American flags.
The National Christmas Tree at the White House also donned a patriotic theme of red, white and blue.
“We celebrate Christmas in a time of testing,” then-President George W. Bush said at the event.
It's Christmas 365 