A Message From David H.C. Read
Home By Christmas: Celebrating What?

Good Friends:

Readers maybe surprised that this issue of The Living Pulpit seems to break with our tradition of focusing on a doctrinal or ethical theme and deals with a festival of the Church. There is no real change. Our hope was that since the number of churches observing Christmas each year has recently increased during this century, we could all benefit from a sharing of our understanding
of this celebration in our different traditions in Word and Sacrament As The contributions came in we rejoiced in the variety of content and expression and believe that many will find in these pages a stimulus to offer from the pulpit something more satisfying than the annual lament about "the secularizing of Christmas."

It is worth remembering, too, that we were all not raised to accept Christmas as a Church festival. I remember going to school as usual in Scotland on Christmas Day, 1915. There are still a few areas in America and Europe where churches follow tow the tradition that churches should not observe any festivals which are neither ordered nor described in the Bible.

Among the slogans associated with this festival is one that acquired a special flavor for me and many others during World War II (especially for those who like myself were in POW camps) - "Home by Christmas." I had time to reflect on this from 1940 to 1945, when I was a prisoner of war in Germany. There were the super-optimists who used it to rally our spirits as we began a dreary pilgrimage on that June in 1940 when the Hiland Division of the British Army, then under French direction, had been swept up by General Rommel in his blitz through Normandy during the Battle of France. Not many felt like singing "Home by Christmas" as, after trudging 200 miles, we settled into our first camp in the heart of Bavaria. The war news was at its worst. Home was now
a place where those we loved were being exposed to bombing day and night. Christmas 1940 was a strange mixture of emotions for all on the wrong side of the barbed wire. I remember midnight Christmas when suddenly 1400 British officers emerged spontaneously and filed through the camp singing "Hi-ho! Hi-ho! as back to work we go," ending with a huge circle as the German commandant frantically brandished his revolver. I should add that our spirits were raised an hour earlier by the sound of German girls' voices singing from outside the wire the carol, "Stille Nacht; Heilige Nacht," in the village church right where we now were having our celebration.

Christmas 1941 passed without a sound of the old slogan. So did Christmas 1942 and 1943. Even 1944, which brought us news of allied victories, left most of us cautious about using the old slogan. We learned what the Bible means by the old proverb: "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick."

This was when many of us discovered the difference between what the Scripture calls "a living hope" and the frail and empty optimism which is all the world has to offer; and the difference between the Bible means by "home" and nostalgia for the comforts of the life we once knew with its regular routines. Today, when I catch sight of a church invitation on a New York bus to "come home for Christmas," I rejoice in the deeper meaning that could sustain us "no matter what" in the parental love of our God and the communion of the saints, which is the true Church and the soul's ultimate home.

Recently, as I was fumbling through a drawer full of mementos of those war years, I cam across a torn and crumpled bit of paper on which I recognized the opening lines of a poem I had written in the prison camp at Christmas 1944. They took me right back to that last prison Christmas. The cynics were having their day, and no one dared to say "Home by Christmas." The news might be good, but once again, as in the early days, we were desperately short of food, and increasingly aware (though we never spoke about it) that we were in the hands of an unpredictable maniac who was unlikely to let us go home in peace, whether at Christmas or any other time. And were these allied planes we saw and heard? Encouraging, yes, but did the pilots of our planes know the difference between an 55 Headquarters and a POW camp?

All this had added up to a new slogan: "Lets not celebrate Christmas this year." No carols, no pageants, not even those astonishing recipes with which we concocted unbelievable Christmas puddings. The lost poem had been my response - and the response of all those who had kept the flicker of faith alive. The opening lines brought it all back:

"Let's not celebrate Christmas this year'?
God, what a yelp from Christian men!

The point to the poem was simple and worth dwelling on, no matter what our circumstances. I remember asking if any could think of Peter, Paul and the other apostles writing of their confidence in the Gospel of Christ, but suggesting that there were occasions when they should give in to despair. Can we imagine any writer of an epistle to these first Christians saying "I know you are going through a very rough time, so why not forget about celebrating The Incarnation." Paul reminded his friends at Philippi that he had known imprisonment, floggings, shipwreck, starvation, but launched into a celebration of the Incarnation that still echoes in our hearts and minds (see
Philippians 2:1-11).

We were not in special danger or deprivation when I wrote that poem; but a few miles away Dietrich Bonhoeffer, after months of trials and threats to his life, was in the hands of the
Gestapo awaiting the scaffold which was prepared for him. I cannot imagine him writing one of his letters from prison complaining That this was no time for Christmas celebrations. His letters breathed a total confidence in his Savior.

The Gospel is no less true when circumstances are most terrible. If we soak ourselves in this truth we shall never find ourselves making excuses for our lack of desire to celebrate or offer any excuses to our flock. May Christmas joy be real and radiant for us all - no matter what our circumstances.

Grace be with you,

David H. C. Read
Chair