When I wrote about the World War I Christmas truce, part of me…the idealist…was thinking how wonderful it would be to have peace a day at a time….because war and damage and death is just so horrific. What would it be like to have the Taliban and the Pakistanis and the Afghanis and the US soldiers celebrate Christmas together? Remember, Islam and Judaism and Christianity all share the story of Genesis and all celebrate goodness around the same time of year.

I am a harpist and have played on Christmas Eve for more years than I can count…in so many different churches, during so many different crises and economies, and with a world facing so many challenges that seemed unresolvable. So, this time of year is a time when thoughts of pain and suffering and the stories of lives impacted are very close to my heart. I just know when major life events happen near Christmas or New Years, or any other major holiday, the holidays are never the same.

One Christmas, about 10 years ago, Dallas and I played at Renown Medical Center on the oncology unit for four days over the Christmas Eve through the weekend, with two of our closest friends who had never met each other were each suffering from cancers that would take them each not long after the New Year. It was hard to think of the families and staff in the hospital facing perhaps their last Christmas together, suffering more because of the paradox of the best time of year and the worst time of life. We learned that even in the greatest pain, healing could happen, if only for a few hours. We can all be well together, conscious of the preciousness of life.

Am I really dreaming…of things that can only happen in dreams? Or is it possible that in our individual humanity, it the core of who we are, we can actually just stop killing each other? The economy will recover, but lives changed by wars remain changed and the recovery is far more difficult, hardly measured in a stock market or interest rates.

The final verses of the Christmas Truce Carol reads:

Their rifles all they set aside,
One impulse to obey;
‘Twas just the men on either side,
Just men — and Christmas Day.

They dug the graves for all their dead
And over them did pray:
And Englishmen and Germans said:
“How strange a Christmas Day!”

Between the trenches then they met,
Shook hands, and e’en did play
At games on which their hearts were set
On happy Christmas Day.

Not all the emperors and kings,
Financiers and they
Who rule us could prevent these things —
For it was Christmas Day.

Oh ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.

Regardless of differing beliefs and practices, it is difficult for me not to joyously celebrate the spirit of birthing a new peace each year because it is in the air, everywhere…and it gives us all pause to consider why it is only on Christmas Day in this season we speak of these things. This week is Chanukah, celebrating the hope of light and of persistence of goodness over evil, a heroic story of faith and miracles.

I personally wish and pray that next year at this time, the stories we tell each other are inspired because we crossed the bridge from war to peace, that more healing is going on than dis-ease, and because the sunlight of a new dawn for each of us and our families is evidenced everywhere…

God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.