Peace Light
Iowa Conference Art/Adobe Stock
My favorite Christmas memory from my childhood comes from 1972.
On Christmas Eve, the church my dad served offered Communion to whoever showed up between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Families often arrived together or with neighbors, or individuals simply came wanting to take the Sacrament. My dad and his Associate, Dick Wing, would preside through the late afternoon into the evening.
As people gathered, when there were enough to fill the kneeling rails in front, say 20 to 25 people, the ushers would guide people down, and the pastors would say prayers and offer the Communion liturgy. People were served in little cups and small pieces of bread. My mother played the organ the entire time, except during the prayers, the Communion, and the dismissal of those at the rail. She was not the main organist of the church, but she always played for that part of Christmas Eve.
In the heyday of the 60s and 70s, hundreds of people came during those four hours. Then, at 11 p.m., the church held a Christmas Eve service with the large Chancel Choir, its sanctuary full. When midnight arrived, and the service concluded, the bell in the bell tower would be rung — I remember my father letting my brothers and me go to the back of the narthex to pull the rope in the belfry, ringing out that Christmas morning again, miraculously, arrived.
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In 1972, the ongoing Vietnam War was a nightmare: boys slightly older than my eldest brother were returning home in body bags, my father was officiating funerals for the children of his parishioners, and our whole family was opposed to the war. My brother was a senior in high school and would soon become eligible for the draft, although he would seek a college deferment. While my parents preached peace, human dignity, and a Jesus who binds us all together, it was a time of controversy and unrest in society concerning Vietnam, civil rights, and the women’s movement. It was a time of change.
Earlier in the afternoon on that Christmas Eve, my brother asked my mother if he could put Christmas lights on the roof of the parsonage before the services at the church began. The parsonage stood across the street from the front doors of the sanctuary, which were slightly elevated on a platform with steps down. In California fashion, the parsonage was a long stucco, single-level home on a double lot that wrapped around the corner. As people came out of the Sanctuary at midnight they would directly face the parsonage. My mother always had a beautiful wreath on the front door and lights around the porch. She told my oldest brother that it would be ok if he put lights up on the roof.
So, as the afternoon wore on into the evening, we could hear him up there running around. When my mother went across the street to play the organ for the Communion services, he said he needed to get a few more lights together. At 6 p.m., he was down from the roof, and my brothers and I went to meet our mom and dad to take Communion together, then we kids returned home. At 8:15 p.m., my mother and father came back to the parsonage, and as was our custom on Christmas Eve, we all opened one present. My father then went back to the church to prepare for the 11 p.m. service. At 10:45, my mother and the rest of us were all getting ready to cross the street for the late service when my oldest brother told my mother that he would just be a little while, that he wanted to check the lights on the roof and turn them on. And so we left without him.
Many of you reading this were not born until long after 1972. But for those who remember, as I do, on December 18th of that year, President Richard Nixon ordered Operation Linebacker II, also known as the Christmas Bombing. B-52 fighter bombers sprayed North Vietnam with bombs weighing between 500 and 700 lbs. It is estimated that 1,624 civilians were killed in those airstrikes.[i] The North Vietnamese claimed they shot down 34 planes and killed or captured the pilots.
Of course, we now know today — what many knew unofficially at the time — that from 1965 until 1972, there were also ongoing bombing raids into Cambodia.[ii]2,565 bombing sorties took place from ’65 -’68. Between ’65 and ’72, 2,756 missions with 941 tons of explosives were dropped, with an estimated 50,000-150,000 killed. Twenty-five percent of the people of Cambodia became refugees.[iii] During the Vietnam years, approximately 58,000 Americans died, and estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians ranged from 970,000 to 3 million. It is not a stretch to say that all the world was in mourning.
So, on Christmas Eve 1972, while my other brothers and I sat with our mother in church and while my father brought the Christmas message, my oldest brother was up on the parsonage roof setting up Christmas lights. At the end of the service, my other two brothers and I went to ring the bell in the belfry. My mother and father went to the porch beyond the doors of the sanctuary. The people began to pour out as the music from the organ still rang, “Joy to the World.” And there, shining in brilliant glory, covering the entire roof of the parsonage, was a giant Peace Sign.
If you remember, during those turbulent years, the Peace Sign was a controversial symbol. For many, it represented a new way, a new hope for freedom, and a new season of human kindness. For others, it represented a protest against the government or a protest against values that people believed held them steady. When I and my other brothers saw what our eldest brother had done, we had no idea how this was going to go down with our father.
We went home, and after a while, my mother came back from greeting people, and she gathered us in the front room where our Christmas tree stood. She was pretty grim. As I look back all these years later, I wonder if my mother worried that the church would ask us to leave. I wonder if she was uncertain. I just remember we were all sitting there in silence, waiting for my father to come home. And then he did. He walked in and stood for a moment in the doorway to the living room. My eldest brother stood up. After a moment, my father walked over, put his arms around him, and said, “I love you, son.” It was then that we all breathed again, or like for the first time. It was the breath of joy and relief and gladness. I remember my mother started to laugh, and then we were all laughing. I remember Christ being born again.
This is my favorite childhood memory of Christmas. It is the memory of simple protest to the wrongs of the world, to the way we are challenged every Christmas to shine a Peace Sign, if not from the roof of our homes, then from the grandeur of our hearts.
This year, we pray for peace in Palestine, in Sudan, in Ukraine, and in places of the world that do not even make the news. We pray for peace in our families, in our neighborhoods, and in our country. This Christmas, I want the Peace Sign to remind me again of how our young people create hope for a future they will inherit, and I want to know again, as the bells of Christmas ring out, that Christ who is born is the most profound and transforming Peace Sign lighting up the night and to whom we owe our first and only allegiance.
This Christmas, I want to breathe again like Christmas 1972.
[i] Operation Linebacker II, Wikipedia
[ii] Bombs over Cambodia. Owen, Taylor and Kiernan, Ben. Genocide Studies Program. The Walrus. Yale University. 2006
[iii] Ibid.