In the bitter cold of the winter of 1777, so the story goes, a man by the name of Isaac Potts was riding his horse along the outskirts of a snowy forest surrounding his property in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where General George Washington’s ragged Continental Army had established a winter bivouac.
Christmas Prayers
In that December the War for Independence depended largely on Washington’s army which was in the most pitiable of conditions. And as Christmas approached that year the future of the new nation was very much in doubt.
There is certainly controversy over what actually happened next, but according to the diary of a Presbyterian minister named Nathaniel Randolph Snowden (who claimed that Potts told him the story in person) Potts was riding past the woods when he heard what he later called “a plaintive sound.” Descending from the saddle and tying his horse to a sapling Potts walked quietly into the woods where to his surprise he came upon General Washington alone and on his knees praying in the snow. The great man was, according to Potts, “at prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with His Divine aid, as it was a crisis, and the cause of the country, of humanity, and of the world.”
Clearly, knowing that the very fate of the nation hung in the balance, Washington’s Christmas in 1777 was one of great fear and trepidation.
One hundred and sixty-seven years later Corporal Francis Xavier Steinberg of the US 84th Infantry Division was dealing with his own brand of fear and trepidation. It was Christmas Eve 1944 and the twenty-year-old was shivering in the hayloft of a barn in Belgium. Frank, as he is known today, was doing his best to get some sleep in spite of the below-zero temperatures. But it wasn’t only the cold that made sleep so elusive. Frank knew that the following day, Christmas Day, he and his fellow infantrymen would be going into combat. Again.
What Frank didn’t know was that he was about to fight in the largest land battle that US forces took part in during World War II, a monumental clash of German and Allied forces later called the Battle of the Bulge. Before it was over, 19,000 US soldiers would be killed.
Today, sixty years later, Frank says he can’t honestly remember what he was thinking the night of that Christmas Eve. He only knows that he was terrified. And he prayed. A Catholic, Frank said his staple prayer was the “Hail Mary,” which he repeated over and over.
Two days later Frank was seriously wounded as his platoon came under heavy German artillery fire. He spent more than a year in a military hospital.
Truly, the stories of General Washington and Corporal Steinberg serve to remind us that throughout history Christians have often had to celebrate Christmas in times of great stress and anxiety. We shouldn’t be surprised. Even at the time of Jesus’s birth, Bethlehem was ruled by a man whose cruelty and murderous paranoia led him to order the deaths of his wife and several relatives because he suspected them of plotting against him. Some said that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s wife. That first Christmas had its own special anxieties.
For Americans this year’s Christmas can’t help but be tinged with the sobering realization that we are once again a nation at war. Only God knows whether we are at the beginning, the middle, or near the end of this thing. But once more we have to celebrate Christmas under very stressful circumstances. And we have to find a way to be merry knowing that there may be more attacks on our nation, and even greater hardships ahead of us.
When “Merry” Seems Hard
Our thoughts turn to the men and women of our military, those who bear the heaviest burden of defending our freedom, most of whom will be away from their loved ones at Christmas for the first time. We think about their families, the mothers and fathers, husbands and wives and children who will have to pray and work their way through the holidays, doing their best to keep the spirit of the Christ Child alive in their homes under the most difficult of circumstances. I wonder how they’ll be able to find the Christmas spirit in the light of recent events. We could all use a little encouragement this holiday season.
And so, to paraphrase the popular Mel Torme song, I’m offering these simple phrases in the hope that they’ll help in some small way to brighten someone’s Christmas.
Among my favorite Christmas tunes is, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” It was written by a couple of guys named Ralph Blaine and Hugh Martin in 1944 during the dark days of the Second World War. As the years went by performers changed the words until today most people only know the schmaltzy “modern” versions. But Blaine’s & Martin’s original lyrics, sung by Judy Garland in Meet Me In Saint Louis that same year, revealed the need that Americans felt during wartime to hang on to hope, to believe that things would get better. They reminded Americans that as they hoped for the future, they had to find joy in the troubled present. The differences between the original lyrics and what you’re used to hearing may be subtle, but they’re significant. Here’s what they wrote in 1944:
Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas,
Let your heart be light.
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas,
Make the yuletide gay.
Next year all our troubles will be miles away.
Once again as in olden days, happy golden days of yore,
Faithful friends, who are near to us, will be dear to us once more.
Someday soon, we all will be together,
If the fates allow.
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So, have yourself a Merry Little Christmas now.
Those lyrics, written sixty years ago, speak as powerfully today as they did then. As we “muddle through” our everyday tasks trying to live normally in these abnormal days, we need to hold tightly to the hope that these troubled times will pass in the not-too-distant future. We need to lift our hearts and minds to the One Whose birthday we celebrate. We need to focus on living with joy in our hearts today, and have a merry little Christmas now.
Friends: Life’s Best Gift
Take note of the line, “Faithful friends, who are near to us, will be dear to us once more.” Contemporary artists sing it differently. But Blaine’s and Martin’s phrasing is a reminder that all too often we take for granted those closest to us. And it takes troubled times like then and now to make us realize how dear those people really are.
Each year we meet hundreds of new people in our everyday lives. Many are like the divider stripes on a highway that come at us and go past us so fast that we hardly notice them. Even though they're introduced to us and we shake their hands, many people that we meet go directly to that dusty back room of our memories where we seldom go, never to be given a second thought.
If we're lucky, only a few of them will make our lives more difficult than before we met them.
But if we're really blessed… maybe a few of those hundreds will make our lives better. They make us smile when we see them or we hear their voices. They make us laugh when we think of something they said. They send us a funny email message to make us chuckle. They encourage us when we need a lift. Most of all, they remind us of who we really are — not the title on our business card, or the role that we play in public life — but the person we are at home, the person we are when we’re with our closest friends and family. Those are the people who bring out the real you and me. We could think of them as Christmas presents that we get throughout the year, because each time we meet them they bring the Christ Child to us when we need Him most.
So, next time you hear the song, thank God for those people in your life who are living Christmas presents to you. Be a living Christmas present to those you love. Pray for brave men like Frank Steinberg and those serving our country today. And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.
© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Joe Pacuska is a Catholic apologist, writer and businessman whose career has spanned senior management positions in the Internet and telecommunications industry. Joe currently resides in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania with his wife and three children.
