University of Virginia Library

Christmas, 1970

In spite of the decorations which
inevitably spring up around shopping centers
shortly after Halloween and all of the other
trappings which remind us that Christmas is
that time of year when the Gross National
Product gets its biggest boast, we cannot help
but believe that there is a much better side to
those last two weeks of December which
comprise the Christmas season.

Each year, at this time, a greater effort is
seemingly made by all to be friendly and
humane. In past years it has become a
tradition for our government to seek a truce
of sorts in Vietnam in deference to the
coming of the Prince of Peace. People who
claim that the killing in Southeast Asia is
necessary become rather dovish all of a
sudden and almost concede that the war is
wrong. Those who have opposed this sort of
killing for so long even become convinced
that the time is near when men will realize
that it is wrong to kill, to maim, to bomb.

But Christmas comes but once a year, as
the saying goes, and soon everyone returns to
normal. Man has been killing his fellow man
in wars for just as long as he has been
discriminating and our hopes and dreams of
the season are replaced with a despair which
will last until the next yule season.

And so even though Christmas is a season
in which we, as humans, and as a nation take
time to ponder the values we espouse in
relation to the course we have chosen, and
consider for a moment, shielded from the
rhetoric of the Cold War, the Christmas
message of peace and good will, we soon
forget these thoughts which contrast so
violently with our hatred for each other as
humans.

This year men of good will spend less
time pondering these thoughts. For the war is
winding down. We have accepted President
Nixon's troop withdrawals as a compromise
between our humanity and our desire not to
be defeated in a country in which we have
chosen to meddle.

It does not matter, it seems, that these
troop withdrawals are not the way to peace,
that they only indicate a confidence that the
war can be continued and won with a smaller
number of United States ground combat
troops. We cannot take the final step of
declaring that the war in Vietnam is officially
a "bad" war, a war which is futile, insane, or
one which has despoiled the American ideal.

No, we seem to believe that yellow people
who believe in another system are wrong and
should not be given the chance to corrupt
another state. And so our President speaks of
the danger of allowing the Vietcong to defeat
our great nation, as if they could ever really
defeat us in any conventional sense of the
word. We will, of course, have some doubts
about this policy, particularly around this time
of year, but nothing serious, mind you. After
all, one only has to be humane and generous
during a short time of the year. Come January
we can return to normal and not feel guilty
about our hatred.

For this is the tenth year in which we have
hoped for a settlement to the Vietnam war.
Our desire for victory has grown much
stronger in those years than our remorse over
the fact that those are real people being killed
over there. We wonder how many more
Christmas seasons must we endure before our
hopes for humanity are completely absorbed
by our desire for a rapid victory.

Because you see, Christmas used to
celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace.
In the past decade it has been changing into
more of a hollow thing, merely another
meaningless ritual for the very young, who
haven't been around long enough to know
any better.