I admit that when it comes to Christmas, I do what playwright Arthur Miller said audiences had to do to enjoy a great play – “suspend their disbelief.”
There is so much about the joy, beauty, and sacredness of Christmas that cannot stand up under historical scrutiny. After all, we have no real idea when Jesus was actually born.
But the power of tradition at this time of the year is worth “suspending” one’s disbelief in order to enjoy it all.
It’s like telling family stories around the dinner table. Who cares if they are true or accurate in every detail. They make us laugh and cry and hold in our heart the people who once sat with us.
So this time of year I believe in Santa and reindeer and the magic of mistletoe as well as singing old time carols whose theology no longer reflects the content of my faith.
It’s all about the season as a whole, the spirit that cannot be grasped, but is as real as love or the wind. The power of Christmas is something no one can explain.
How could anyone explain the Christmas truce of 1914?
After Pope Benedict XV called for a “truce” at Christmas that year, no official cease fire was declared by either side, yet on various battlefields spread across Europe German and Allied troops spontaneously started singing Christmas Carols to each other on Christmas eve.
Then at dawn on Christmas morning soldiers on both sides dared to leave their trenches and walk across no-man’s-land toward one another, calling out “Merry Christmas” in their native language. These sworn enemies shook hands, laughed, sang Carols, and even exchanged presents of cigarettes. Some stories say that in a few instances soldiers from opposing sides played a game of soccer with a make shift ball.
Why such a moment could happen on Christmas is anybody’s guess, but it did and it does over and again. There is, indeed, something special about Christmas time.
We know, of course, that the Christmas truce of 1941 did not last, but it was one of the seminal events of the entire war, a moment when soldiers on different sides chose on their own to put down their guns and affirm one another as human beings.
I possess no wisdom about why Christmas holds such power, but I have come to believe it may lie in the fact that Christmas is not just about the birth of Jesus, though it is that, too. It has become a universally recognized holy season when Christians and non-Christians alike dare to believe love is the greatest power on earth because they have seen it melt the coldest heart and even inspire soldiers to put down their guns.
Yes, it may last for only a day, but that day makes all the others days of the year bearable.
Which is why this year all I want for Christmas is, well, Christmas, for me and for you.
linnposts.com 
I sometimes think of the truce of 1914 and ask myself: If bitter (or driven) enough to the point of killing each other enemies could have done that once, why can’t it be done again, and why can’t mankind do it every day? I don’t know the answer to those questions. Nor do I know why mankind always resorts to killing each other over most every disagreement. Maybe there are no answers. Maybe some of the answers lie in the presence of politically and power and ego driven leaders. Reading Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood moved me further along the road to thinking that there are no answers to those questions and one has to conclude that it is designed into mankind. To me, that is a very pessimistic view and I would much rather not accept that view, but I don’t know what else to think at this point.
It’s always a struggle, Wally, but this time of year I cling to hope in order to prepare for the New Year. I’m not sure reading Karen Armstrong’s book is the thing to do at the moment. Hearing it lecture on it, I think I will put that off until 2015.
Jan,
I know I am being redundant when I say that no one “gets it” and expresses “it” as well as you do. What more can I say……….except……
Merry Christmas, my friend!
Bill
Bill Blackwell is correct, so I say “ditto” back to you, Jan! Hope you have another magical Christmas, which I think they always seem to be! Guess my name bears the fact that “yes,Virginia, there is a Santa”!!
My best, Virginia
Thank you for this heartfelt expression, Jan. Humanity needs the brief respite that “suspended disbelief” brings. It is a very small bit of practice for an unfortunately distant time when our progeny will have learned to believe in the oneness of us all; that we are all individual rays from the same light source. In that time there will only be disbelief in the way we used to be. Merry Christmas!
Once again you have reached out to help others navigate the journey through stories that are difficult to “believe” yet they continue to be stories that have a compelling power to move us into a deeper place, even the most skeptical among us (if they’re able to be honest about it)…a power that can silence guns on a battle field if only for a matter of a few hours. THANKS!
Bob, your comment reaffirms the power we all can feel at Christmas, if we are willing to allow ourselves.
In 1914, they didn’t have radio. In 1941, they did. I read a story from somewhere, that at Christmas 1941, both the British and German armies faced each other in North Africa, with extensive minefields between them (sorry – no football this time!). Both sides were exhausted. A British offensive the month before to drive Rommel out of Africa had run out of steam, caused by having to reinforce our already overstretched armies in the Far East, Japan having entered the war on Hitler’s side.
All knew that in the year they were about to enter, there’d be another round of bitter fighting, and yet more of the best young men of both nations would die or be permanently maimed. Yet for a while on this Christmas Eve 1941, radio equipment from both sides could pick up the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, which the BBC had first instituted in 1928, and for however brief a time, all, whether German “Landser” or British “Tommy”, could hear that both were children of the same heavenly Father…
Light does shine in darkness, and even if darkness continues, so does the light. That glimmer is often what keeps us going, faint as it may be. Why the darkness? Because we are human. Why the light? Because there is God. Believing that is the difference faith makes.
Hello Nigel My question is: WHY could that realization have not stayed with them, so that Peace & Good Will to Men could be realized rather than just be words on a Christmas card?
I believe that the answer to that question is Man’s fallen nature. But the marvel of it all is that God came to share in that nature, overcoming it by dying on the cross and rising again.