Atomic Christmas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 443, 19 December 1947, Page 5

Atomic Christmas

issue there has been some special reason why we have found it difficult to wish our readers a care-free Christmas. Three months after we came into existence a world war started, and raged for six years. As soon as it stopped a political war started, again involving the whole world, shadowed now by the atomic bomb; and he is a bold man who thinks he can see to the end of that. But what is Christmas if it is not light in darkness? Whether we celebrate it as Christians or as Pagans the central fact is joy over good news. And the story is always this ‘ and always true: that we have escaped expected pain. Christmas may mean more than that to us; very much more; but it need never mean less. To say that it should always bring us unqualified joy ‘would be to deny pain altogether; to deny hunger, and sickness, and disappointment and sorrow. The most fervent believer in the traditional story does not shut-his eyes to pain and sorrow. He says simply that they have lost their sting, and that every Christmas since the first has been a celebration of that fact. The doubter is standing in his own light who can’t. say something equivalent to that. We shudder at the course of world events since 1939, but a great deal of the horror would go if we knew other stretches of history as well as we know those dismal eight years. But those who lived through them knew them, and still rejoiced at Christmas. If we can’t rejoice it is not because faith has- gone and history coldshouldered us, but because we have lost the capacity to laugh anywhere but in complete security. And safe laughter is not laughter at all. It is like the gifts of people who are embarrassed by possessions. Christmas has nothing to do with security, or with protection. It is the festival of the insecure, of the forgiven and the forgiving, of dried tears and brands snatched from the burning. year since our first