We can find peace and good will this holiday season

The Christmas season is upon us and is one of the year’s most anticipated seasons.  It could be said, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” to quote a line from the song with the same name.

However, we hear about wars and conflicts daily. We have just completed a long and contentious presidential campaign cycle. To quote David L. Buckner in a talk I heard recently, “[we live] in a world filled with contention and division, where civil discourse has been replaced with judgment and scorn.” There seems to be no peace, and people are losing hope of things ever getting better.

It reminds me of the second and third stanzas of the poem “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which were put to music by John Baptiste Calkin.

“I thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along th’ unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

“And in despair I bowed my head:

‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said,

‘For hate is strong, and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.’”

While the turmoil and contention around us is discouraging and causes us to wonder if things will ever improve, there is a glimmer of hope for peace on earth, good will to men in our turbulent world.

During the Christmas season, people seem to be able to put aside differences and find it easier to foster feelings of peace and goodwill in their interactions with one another.

I recently read a short article documenting an amazing event that happened on Christmas Eve 1914 during World War 1.  The British and German armies had been engaging in trench warfare for months and had suffered significant casualties from both armies.  If anyone had reasons to harbor hate and wish for the worst for their enemy, it was these soldiers.  However, on this Christmas Eve an extraordinary thing happened: “The Christmas Truce.”

Late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force heard German troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches. Messages began to be shouted between the trenches.

The following day, British and German soldiers met in no man’s land and exchanged gifts and took photographs. Some played impromptu games of football [soccer]. They also buried casualties and repaired trenches and dugouts (Imperial War Museum; iwm.org.uk).”

If these men, who in the days before this remarkable event had been killing and maiming one another relentlessly as enemies, could lay aside their differences and meet in no man’s land and have peaceful interactions with one another, then surely we can lay aside our differences with those around us and try to be peacemakers.

We each have the choice to promote peace or to stir up conflict, turmoil, division, hate and hopelessness.  A great man once said, “We can disagree without being disagreeable.”  Our country, or the world, for that matter, cannot change from war to peace overnight.  But, if we, as individuals, choose to promote peace and hope as we interact with others, and if those that we interact with also choose the same in their interactions with others, it can cause a ripple effect like dropping a stone into a pond. The ripples radiate out to fill the entire pond. Maybe we can’t change the world, but we can have peace and hope in our families, among our friends, in our clubs, in our churches, in our towns and who knows how far our influence can extend. When all is said and done, I don’t think anyone would regret having promoted peace and fostered hope in those around them.

So, as we celebrate this Christmas season, let’s look for opportunities to foster peace and goodwill with those we meet.  And why not extend that spirit of peace and goodwill throughout the coming year? Who knows! If the ripple effect continues long enough and spreads far enough, perhaps someday we could truly achieve the ideal that the closing stanzas of Longfellow’s poem suggest:

“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

‘God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good will to men.’

“Till, ringing, singing, on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,

Of peace on earth, good will to men!”