Christmas in 2020
As I read over the article I was going to send out today, I realized it was too depressing. Instead of comparing the events of this past year to history, I decided I needed something more uplifting, like Christmas. For many, Christmas is the happiest time of the year. For Christians, it celebrates the birth of the baby Jesus when the Angels proclaimed to the shepherds, “Peace and good will towards men.”
If you are not Christian, it is still a time celebrated, as Fred said to his uncle Ebenezer Scrooge, “I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round…as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good.”
Yet Christmas in 2020 does not seem to fit. It is not a time of peace, as our nation is still tearing itself apart over the past election and COVID is making it impossible to gather with the ones we love to celebrate. People are struggling everywhere with sickness, loneliness, and finances. For many, it may not seem like Christmas.
As I pondered Christmases past, I thought of Christmas 1914, another year when families were separated. This is a story that most know, but maybe we could use a reminder. In 1914, the world was suddenly tearing apart as the major European nations chose sides and began slaughtering each other in ways never imagined. Before the war was over, the nations of England, France, Russia, Germany and Austria all lost around a million people each to this contest. It was not a necessary war. Neither side was the good or bad guys. Neither side had done a great wrong that needed stopping. It was more a family feud among ruling cousins who happened to be royalty.
The war quickly turned into a stalemate as Germany’s advance was halted at the Battle of the Marne that lasted from Sept. 6-12, costing the lives of almost ...