Silent Night

Christmas Thought for 2006

The early morning skies were gray, close. Sometimes the clouds never bothered going aloft; drops of dew hung in the air, condensed, dripped like subtle water torture. These were the miserably cold days. When the clouds would clear, the low, pale sun would sputter far to the south. The wind would howl in the trees at night, and by dawn the air was bitter cold. Fingers and toes would numb in this weather. As November wore out and December wore on the sun spent ever less time in the sky. By the solstace, days were short; nights long.

This had its compensations. In the dark, it was much harder to see who you were shooting, so shooting became waste of ammunition. The trench was cold, mucky, miserable, boring at night. But it was relatively safe. Misery and boredom took on an almost blessed sense because they were drawn in contrast to the daytime chores of shooting and collecting dead bodies, of mixing muck with blood by the very act of walking in the trenches. By Christmas Eve, darkness fell late in the afternoon. Even the local farmers who tilled these fileds the year before would have eaten an early supper in darkness.

Perhaps it was drizzling in some places. Or it was clear. We would like to imagine that where the lines were drawn on the fir-lined hills there was snow on the ground, snow on the trees. We would like to imagine that the earth held a hushed silence, the kind of silence that only a snow-covered evergreen wood can create. From out of the chilly, damp darkness there came a sound. At first it was too dim and distant to make out. Then it became a familiar sound, yet it was distinctly different. If one listened closely one might have heard

Stille nacht, heilige nacht

The words sounded strange. Yet the tune carried the meaning. Men in the trenches joined in

All is calm; all is bright. ‘Round yon virgin, mother and child,

Before long, men were putting down their rifles, coming out of the trenches, and joining in song.

Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in Heavenly peace, Schlaf in Himliche ruhe.

The song shared, the spell was cast. Soldiers shared food. In the flat fields they played a game of soccer. They played freely and happily, with makeshift goal posts and without real refs. They spoke different languages, but they learned to sing the same song. And this song, for one brief moment became bigger than their differences in language, their differences in religion, their differences in nationality. For some brief moments the men realized that there are things they share that are bigger than themselves, bigger than their differences, bigger than their fears. For some brief moments the qualities that bind us together as caring humans in a world that too often seems punishingly miserable trump the weaknesses that cow us and make us fear, hate, or loathe people we do not know - people who are not like us. Time wore on, the men tired, they returned to their trenches. Eventually the pale sun slipped once more above the horizon.

As they could yesterday the men in the trenches could see each other whenever their helmets popped above the edge of the trench. And as they did yesterday they shot. Yet for many of them it was just a little more difficult to shoot at someone they sang with or played soccer with. So maybe the mortality rate dipped a little bit. Maybe the petty officers got in a jamb because the war stopped being quite so violent, quite so brutally mortal.

News of the affair reached the officers thirty miles behind the lines. And they were outraged. The men stopped shooting at each other? “What gives them the right to do that? Heads will roll. How, after all, is one expected to run an army if the soldiers fail to shoot? How is one to exercise national policy if the troops drop their rifles and start singing, at the drop of a hat? It is outrageous!” Orders go out: anyone who sings with the enemy will be courtmartialed. Or shot. And that takes care of the problem. No more Christmas singing.

Mortality rate stays high through the rest of the war. Millions die. Four years later, the lines are the same. Germans surrender, and the conditions that spawn the next world war are drawn up at Versailles by the same men who prohibited Christmas singing with the enemy.

The soldiers who sang with the enemy, however, started a movement that eventually united Europe, not as a single entity, but as a group of nations with distinctive backgrounds, histories, languages, and cultures. As Europeans they saw that they shared enough common interests that they could set aside their differences. This emphasis on common interest to the exclusion of differences is a central idea in liberalization. It caused Europe to blossom, much as a similar idea had done in America. Liberalization began to sweep the globe. China, India, and a number of nations in Southeast Asia became more open. They traded with the west. And they engaged more in the same liberalizing ideas. The same liberalization trend swept the urban areas of many Islamic nations, not the least of which were Iraq and Iran.

But somthing began to happen in America. Americans learned to fear and hate people who were not like themselves. Perhaps it happened spontaneously, or perhaps a certain class of leaders understood that fear is the easiest means by which to control a culture, especially a culture that is unused to physical deprivations. Fear of anything can be a powerful motive force in manipulating men. Were it not so, the threat of courtmartial would have no ability to stop men from singing “Silent Night” with the enemy on Christmas.

When we forget how to sing “Silent Night" with the people we fear, we forget how to be truly human. We lose sight of the bright and shining gift that is the subject of that song. My Wednesday Worry this Week is that I will not get what I want for Christmas. I am one of the people who is fortunate enough to lack for nothing I need. What I will value most about the things I unwrap on Christmas will not be the value of what they are, but the value that was represented by the fact that someone thought enough to associate me with an object.

What I really want for Christmas is the kind of world where we all lay down our rifles and arise singing from our trenches. One where we share a common vision and sing a song whose meaning we all grasp, one we can all cling to tightly. One where we actually embrace our cultural differences, and where we set aside our incompatible points of view in order to work together on things that matter to us all.

There are people who really are working to create the same kinds of Christmas presences as the soldiers shared when they got out of their trenches. And I realize that I am not yet one of them. My own hope is that more of us work to see the vital humanity we share and overlook the differences in background, religion, nationality, beliefs. When we see the real humanity in each other and treat each other as we would be treated, that is when we receive the real gift of Christmas in our own lives. I can wish for no greater gift than this for us all. Let us choose to see in each other what we see in that manger, calm and bright.

Merry Christmas.