THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1950. THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27580, 23 December 1950, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1950. THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

At Christmas play and make good cheer, For Christmas comes but once a year. This piece of sixteenth century advice from Thomas Tusser is less needed now than when he wrote it. There has been no inclination to diminish the quantity of Christmas good cheer—and this in spite of the multiplication of holidays through the year, the shorter working week and the consequently more frequent opportunities for making merry. That there have been changes in the nature of the celebrations since Thomas Tusser’s time is more apparent. They are less centred in the home, more commercialised and more materialistic. There are those who fear that we are losing the specifically Christian content of Christmas. An exchange of gifts with expressions of friendship, and especially concern for the less fortunate, have their place and value, but it has not been for these alone that the thoughts of mankind have turned to Bethlehem for nearly 2000 years. There must be something, that touched the human spirit more deeply, to explain the age-long, ascendancy of Christmas amongst the world’s festivals.

Two ways of life, which are with us still, were dramatically represented in the events of the first Christmas. In Rome, Octavius had established his imperial supremacy and could devote himself to publicising the glories of the Augustan age. The gates of the temple of Janus were no longer open, for peace had been -given to . the world. Rome’s seasoned legions held in docile subjection the provincials of history’s mightiest empire. National aspirations had been submerged beneath the order and security imposed by spear and sword. Caesar Augustus symbolised the enforced justice that was the foundation of a rule which would last for ever. In Bethlehem was a child born to be King, but in a different sense. His reign was to be in righteousness and in freedom that was the fruitage of a new nobility in the hearts of men. His name was wistfully associated with the great days long awaited, with release for the captives, the opening of the eyes of the blind, with service unselfish and unremitting enough to face every kind of need, with victories of peace to be won by liberated spirits. He brought not so much a new era of history as a new quality of life—the life of God in the souls of men—that would affect all future ages of history.

The conflict between these two ways of life has continued from the beginning and has filled the major chapter in the story of mankind. At the time, in Jerusalem, the closing years of the reign of terrorstricken Herod were tortured by the ghosts of his murdered relatives whose death had been the purchase price of his peace. He had secured his despotism by brutality and intrigue. Its insecurity could not be hidden by the fact that men had learned to call him/“Great.” Usurpers threatened his unwelcome rule, and now men were talking of a new King of the Jews, bom in David’s city of David’s royal line. There was a sure way to end such pretensions; the omnipotent sword was the sufficient answer. He knew no other kingship than that of forte, no other rule than that of repression. The social structures built by the Caesars and the Herods perished soon after them, but we still celebrate Christmas and hesitantly seek the Christian way.

The ineffective victories of successive conquerors only slowly teach the needed lesson to their successors. The despot dies reluctantly. It took Napoleon a life-time to understand that a rule founded on force, such as his own, or Alexander’s or Charlemagne’s, was less enduring than the Kingdom of Christ, founded on love. Hitler placed his faith in the way of the Caesars and Herods and defiantly swept aside as inconsequent the way that embodies the spirit of Christmas.

When, in the present crisis, the .United Nations felt compelled to use force as an unwelcome necessity on its way toward world peace, it confessed that the Galilean is still too great for our little hearts. We still Have too little faith in the possibility of peace established with peaceful sanctions. We misunderstand and fear and misrepresent one another and so put our hope in the omnipotent sword. When we act as though material advantages secured, if necessary, by force are life’s most important considerations, we are making choice between two ways of life. Is it but a voice crying in the wilderness when the World Council of Churches declares that “we are one in proclaiming to all mankind that war as a method of settling disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ ” and that “ the part which war plays in our present international life is a sin against God and a degradation of man ’’? It expresses the Christmas spirit at a time when many are becoming increasingly awafe that that spirit must be embodied in action if mankind is to survive. The things of the spirit cannot be taken from one another. They can be shared. The true good, which we all blindly desire, is somthing that all can possess at once, “without diminution and without envy, and which no one can lose against his will.”