THE EFFORT to turn Christmas into a celebration of universal peace and brotherhood has been underway for many years. This is the principal, and most successful, attack on Christmas in popular culture. It’s an enchanting concept. For who doesn’t want peace? Christmas as  a celebration of material well-being and Marxist justice is related to this Christmas as Peace Fest. See “Pope” Francis’s Christmas message.

The alluring and utopian concept of “peace on earth” is not, however, consistent with the real Christmas. When the angels appeared to the shepherds, as recounted in the Gospel of Luke, they did not herald an era of non-conflict.

And the angel said to them: Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people… (Luke, 2:10)

The good tidings are universal. They are meant for all, without exception. But what do the angels say of peace?

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying:

Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will. (Luke, 2:14-15)

Here we see the angels praying to God for peace, not predicting universal peace, and petitioning for peace among men of good will, not for everybody.

The Christmas story also involves the gruesome slaughter of babies, hardly a peaceful event. For when King Herod finds out that a child of royal lineage is born in Bethlehem, he is filled with jealousy and orders the death of all male children under two years old, as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2. The famous English carol, The Coventry Carol, is an imagined lullaby sung by the mothers of the doomed children.

So here we find in the Nativity narrative, mothers mourning their murdered children! It is indescribably sad and painful. Darkness and conflict are inherent in the Christmas story, as G.K. Chesterton noted in his greatest book, The Everlasting Man:

A ruler under the Roman suzerainty, probably equipped and surrounded with the Roman ornament and order though himself of eastern
blood, seems in that hour to have felt stirring within him the spirit of strange things. We all know the story of how Herod, alarmed at some rumour of a mysterious rival, remembered the wild gesture of the capricious despots of Asia and ordered a massacre of suspects of the new generation of the populace. Everyone knows the story; but not everyone has perhaps noted its place in the story of the strange religions of men. Not everybody has seen the significance even of its very contrast with the Corinthian columns and Roman pavement of that conquered and superficially civilised world. Only, as the purpose in his dark spirit began to show and shine in the eyes of the Idumean, a seer might perhaps have seen something like a great grey ghost that looked over his shoulder; have seen behind him filling the dome of night and hovering for the last time over history, that vast and fearful face that was Moloch of the Carthaginians; awaiting his last tribute from a ruler of the races of Shem. The demons also, in that first festival of Christmas, feasted after their own fashion.

Unless we understand the presence of that enemy, we shall not only miss the point of Christianity, but even miss the point of Christmas.

Christmas does bring a message of peace. But it also brings a message of warfare. On the complexity of it all, Chesterton continues:

Unless we understand the presence of that enemy, we shall not only miss the point of Christianity, but even miss the point of Christmas. Christmas for us in Christendom has become one thing, and in one sense even a simple thing. But like all the truths of that tradition, it is in another sense a very complex thing. Its unique note is the simultaneous striking of many notes; of humility, of gaiety, of gratitude, of mystical fear, but also of vigilance and of drama. It is not only an occasion for the peacemakers any more than for the merry-makers; it is not only a Hindu peace conference any more than it is only a Scandinavian winter feast. There is something defiant in it also; something that makes the abrupt bells at midnight sound like the great guns of a battle that has just been won.

And more:

All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or fading vapour from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago. But the savour is still unmistakable, and it is something too subtle or too solitary to be covered by our use of the word peace. By the very nature
of the story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw’s den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dug-out. It is not only true that such a subterranean chamber was a hiding-place from enemies; and that the
enemies were already scouring the stony plain that lay above it like a sky. It is not only that the very horse-hoofs of Herod might in that
sense have passed like thunder over the sunken head of Christ. It is also that there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a
piercing through the rock and an entrance into an enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace.

The hopes of peace in the first Christmas are for a spiritual peace, not for the end of all earthly conflict, and in some senses that conflict was only just beginning. The mantra “Peace on earth” is often invoked by people who have very non-peaceful intentions.

— Comments —

Tony S. writes:

You quote Luke 2:14-15 correctly.  Those verses can be applied as a proof text for the accuracy of the biblical translation in use; if a Bible uses the more commonly quoted phrase “peace and goodwill to men” one can be assured that text is corrupted. The Protestants changed that verse among others in their bible translations and it is now what most people believe.

In a previous post you also mentioned what Christmas actually means, i.e. Christ’s Mass. Simply put, to celebrate Christmas means to receive the Holy Eucharist. Evangelicals will vehemently protest this point. They absolutely deny the reality of Christian history. American Christianity, which sadly also includes what most Catholics practice, is a not Christianity at all; in fact, in many respects it’s anti-Christ-ianity given how the words of Christ are totally denied. Ask any American Christian what he thinks of Matthew, Chapter 5 (Jesus explicitly states contra to existing Jewish law of his day that to divorce and remarry is adultery) and John, Chapter 6 (Jesus THREE times states the need to consume his body and blood even when his followers leave after each statement). The way so-called Christians will deny these statements is proof of your statement that we are witnessing the “abomination of desolation.”

Thank you for your work as always.

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