Douglas Murray (The Free Press), Things Worth Remembering: Winston Churchill’s Christmas Message to America:
As we near Christmas, I am reminded of the wonderful, 393-word speech delivered by the inimitable Winston Churchill on Christmas Eve of 1941. He spoke from the South Portico of the White House, in the midst of war. …
[T]he reason that these two nations now found themselves at war, the reason he was there, in the White House, on this “strange Christmas Eve,” was that this war was not like any other that had ever been fought. It had been started by monsters fueled by maniacal visions of worldwide domination, and it would be ended—if Churchill had his way—by him and the man in the wheelchair next to him. …
It was critical that everyone, especially Roosevelt, understood this: Their war was not, as Churchill put it, about “greed” or “vulgar ambition.” It was about protecting the love, the beauty, of Christmas from those who would do away with it, strip it of its meaning, its charity, its enduring value.
“Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart,” Churchill went on.
He was painfully aware that, for many young men eagerly signing up to defend their country, this would be their last Christmas.
“Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm,” Churchill said. “Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.”
Today, it is much harder to make out the contours of the conflict we are fighting than it was in December 1941. We have not declared war. No one has explicitly said they want to fight with us. Our enemies are dispersed across a global, loosely fitted-together network; they do not quite amount to an Axis the way the Germans and Japanese once did.
And yet, we feel that the nation is under fire. As is America’s military superiority and soft power, and the values that young Americans have long been steeped in: God, country, freedom. That is why Churchill’s words are worth remembering.
“Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us,” Churchill said. “Resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”
Winston Churchill, Christmas Message 1941:
I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.
This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart. Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.
Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.
And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.
