Your Take: Who Should Have Gotten Coal In Their Stocking This Christmas?

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY FOR MISSING WOMAN

Sunday, December 25, 2005 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Page: 2B 





AS CHRISTMAS observance is adapted to wartime necessities, it is sustaining
to remember that the spirit of the day has not disappeared under the stresses
that have forced destruction in many other directions. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 We would have a different setting from today's for Christmas but we would
not have Christmas different. Dickens' "Christmas Carol," with its
incomparable epitome of the Christmas spirit, is as thrilling to read today as
it was 100 years ago. Harm cannot come from dwelling on Christmas as a day of
joy. No day in the Christian world has brought more gladness to young and old,
poor and rich. In lands far and near, pagan and Christian, millions of men and
women with a yearning to observe Christmas at their own firesides today are
denied the opportunity. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From a sense of duty, they are where they little want to be and are doing
much they would rather not do. Some may be privileged enough to have a
cheerful Christmas. It will be tempered by somber thought of what the day
itself may bring and certainly the morrow will bring, before the spirit of
Christmas can live and thrive untrammeled throughout the world. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 It would be folly to ignore the fact that the present Christmas cannot be
one of full cheerfulness. In his Christmas Eve message to the world yesterday,
President Roosevelt gave official standing to a prediction of heavy casualties
to come. It was a somber and sobering note he struck as Christmas Eve was
about to be celebrated. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The war is now reaching the stage where we shall have to look forward to
large casualty lists - dead, missing and wounded, he said. Coupled with the
warning was an observation that there is no easy road to victory and a
declaration that "the end is not yet in sight." &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 It is not unctuous - it is the simple truth - to say that if the American
people had their way, they would be practicing good will in their relations
with other nations today in preference to waging war. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 On this wartime Christmas, no less than on others, Americans would ask for
no more than to live peacefully in a world at peace. The desire to exercise
good will remains strong, although the conviction rules that war must be
waged. Men of good will are driving themselves to do a dreadful job. It would
be impossible even to try to reconcile the spirit of Christmas with what men
of professed good will are doing were it not for the manifest truth that they
are fighting for peace, an enduring peace, one that will be designed to last
for generations. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Christmas Thoughts From A Time And War Long Past