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
Credit: Atomicheritage.org
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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.

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