Supply-chain problems and looming shortages have some Americans in a panic. But the specter of a more austere holiday season put me in mind of the three Christmases I spent in communist Poland. They were the most meaningful of my life.

In the fall of 1978 I moved to Warsaw to join my girlfriend, Hania, whom I had met two years earlier in London. It was still the period of the złote lata, or golden years, but to a young American the place was depressing, with poorly stocked shops, lusterless merchandise and unsmiling crowds. By December the sun—which we rarely saw—was setting in midafternoon. The light had the murkiness of an old aquarium.