Christmas When It Comes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 183, 24 December 1942, Page 3

Christmas When It Comes

-T must be known to our readers by this time that we jump most of our hurdles a fortnight before we come to them. We have no choice. Even when times were normal we had to start the programmes on their way ten days before’ anyone heard them, and ten days are not enough now that the war has reached the railways and the post office. We walk, in fact, by faith and not by sight, as believers so often must, but it is a particularly awkward fate when the thing believed in and not seen is a festival that events may cloud any moment with sadness. We can therefore only express the hope that Christmas Day when it comes will seem as good an occasion for rejoicing as it seems to us now looking several days ahead. No one will wish to rejoice and do nothing else, and some will not be able to rejoice at all. Only the bravest can say of their lost sons, as a father said to us the other day, "He had a happy life, and an honourable death"; and having said it, and felt it, recover their serenity. Few of us are cast in that noble mould. But We can go part of the way with that brave father and feel that far worse could have happened to all of us this year than has happened. We can feel that brooding over what can never be recovered is a poor way of showing gratitude for the indestructible things our sons have preserved for us, and see that already their courage has brought. the end into sight. For it is a different battle-field at which we gaze these last few weeks. Few of us can ever have felt that the war would not be won; but we can almost feel now that we know how soon victory will come. That justifies some rejoicing. And the cheerfulness of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen under all strains and in every kind of danger and discomfort justifies a good deal more. Not to be cheerful while they are is to fail them where they should be surest of support. We must not fail them. If we can’t eat and drink ourselves into cheerfulness we can think ourselves into serenity and into the next best thing to cheerfulness-confi-dence that the worst Christmas has passed, the worst obstacles have been surmounted, and the worst moments of disillusionment and bitterness have faded into a sombre pride.