Keeping the Christmas message alive

From an editorial in the Dec. 25, 1939, issue of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune:

With much of the Christian world at war, Christmas comes at a time when the world has seldom stood as sorely in need of its message as now.

The message of the first Christmas, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men," came as a benediction and it was re-echoed everywhere as a prayer. As countless generations of men at Christmas time have repeated those words, they have done so in prayer for something which in the lives of most of them they have felt was not fully realized. Peace in the fullest sense of that term has never been secured to the nations of the earth, and the world has never been any too hospitable to its men of good will.

Christmas is a welcome messenger speaking words of meaning no less vital than they were to those who first heard them. The changeless spirit of Christmas wields again its influence upon mankind and, during this brief season at least, there is awakened a fuller realization of the kinship of man, a need for greater love and understanding which transcends the petty differences which divide men and nations.

The voice that was heard speaking in the dawn of the first Christmas day still pronounces its benediction upon the world. But the still, small voice that utters that benediction is all but drowned out by the noise of nations at war and the hymns of hate being sounded on all sides.

The world is slow to learn that finding the peace of which the Christmas message speaks is probably the surest way to those qualities of confidence and security which men feel are so conspicuously lacking in the world order. Conferences alone may not end war and man cannot legislate confidence or security for all his fellows. All these may be instruments to an end, but in the long quest they are little more.

In the coming of Christmas, however, we are reminded once more that no great boon is earned without sacrifice. Unless there is written into our conferences and laws more of the spirit of unselfishness and good will which He whose birthday we seek to commemorate today showed the world, they can accomplish but little.

The message of "peace, good will toward men" is one which the world needs every day of the year and one which everyone should labor to keep alive by remembering always the brotherhood of man.

•••

From an editorial in the Dec. 25, 1961, issue of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune:

"… and, lo the star, which they saw in the east, went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy …"

It is the same faith that impelled the wise men to travel on toward Bethlehem that keeps Christmas alive. The eyes of the wise men were fixed on a star — a beacon of promise and hope.

Our times are little different than the past. Men dispute with men, now as then. Disease and suffering and poverty and loneliness are no strangers to any period of history. Nor are greed and envy, injustice and intolerance …

Nor is faith.

We see what is perhaps its clearest evidence in this twelfth month. The needy and the sick are not forgotten. Many hands reach out to lift the downtrodden. Animosities are laid aside, prejudices stilled.

And in these acts of giving — of mind and spirit as well as substance — men open their hearts unashamedly as perhaps they do at no other time in the year.

These are all acts of faith.

And for those who would follow, the biblical promise may yet be fulfilled: