Nearly ninety years ago, the people of Germany, enthused by neo-pagan occultism, fascism, and nihilism, attempted to raise themselves to the level of a godlike “volk”, and thus degraded their nation for generations to come.
Germany’s aristocratic instincts (smarting after the humiliating defeat of the Great War) held by a populace with no regard for ancient convictions, led to the invasion of Poland and the subsequent beginning of World War Two in 1939.
The proposed Blitzkrieg (lightning war) successfully quickly overtook France due to Germany’s impressive technological abilities, but afterwards settled into a lengthy, costly slog across Europe. In the East, Japan’s imperial expansion into China and French Indochina threatened the American colony of the Philippines — but the Americans patiently ignored the wars of expansion to their east and west.
All that changed on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese unexpectedly attacked Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, the two wars were one, and the battle-lines were drawn: the Allies on one side, the Axis on the other.
Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, traveled to America after the Pearl Harbor attack. He and his chiefs of staff coordinated with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ensure the defeat of their common enemy. While present in D.C. on Christmas Eve, Churchill was asked to give a broadcasted address following the 20th annual observation of the lighting of the community Christmas tree.
Churchill’s Christmas speech serves to remind us that a profitable civilization is the work of many lifetimes. While the men and women in 1941 faced the physical threat of a violent enemy, we today also face threats that harm our communities and threaten our futures: our own neo-paganisms, our own hubris, our own lack of conviction. As we remember Churchill’s words, let us also remember that we are the caretakers of the earth, and let us take that mandate with the utmost seriousness.
His speech is below:
I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.
This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart. Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.
Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.
And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.
