Christmas Eve 1914 a reminder of what peace could be like

American author, educator and clergyman Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) wrote two popular Christmas stories, “The Other Wise Man” (1896) and “The First Christmas Tree” (1897).

A graduate of Princeton University and, later, Princeton Theological Seminary, Van Dyke served as a lecturer at the University of Paris prior to his appointment by President Woodrow Wilson to the office of Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Van Dyke was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He is best known for his works on various religious matters. For example, he wrote the lyrics to the popular hymn, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” (1907), which is sung to the tune of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Van Dyke also wrote the following meditation entitled “Keeping Christmas.” He reminds us that keeping Christmas year-round is better than observing Christmas Day. He asks,

“Are you willing …

• to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you;

• to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you woe the world;

• to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and our chances to do a little more than you duty in the foreground;

• to see that men and women are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy;

• to own up to the fact that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life;

• to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness.

Are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing …

• to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children;

• to remember the weakness and loneliness of people growing old;

• to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough;

• to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear in their hearts;

• to try to understand what those who live in the same home with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you;

• to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you;

• to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open.

Are you willing to do these things, even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing …

• to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world, stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death –

• and that the blessed life that began in Bethlehem more than nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love?

Then you can keep Christmas. If you can keep it for a day, why not always? However, you can never keep it alone.”

May the love that Jesus came to share with our world be with you and your family during this Christmas and always!