As a child, I think I had the desire shared by all children, for every day to be Christmas. Then I grew up and became Santa. In other words, a sensible, boring adult with responsibilities. That childhood
desire became relief that Christmas is NOT every day, now that I know
how much work is involved with pulling off a holiday complete with
exciting gifts, delicious food, time with extended family, and
meaningful traditions. I do love Christmas, and I also love ordinary life as well.

 

(The one and only time my husband has played a Wii game with his kids and their cousins. We don’t have a Wii at our house so this is a rare moment.)

 

But I do wish that we could all have that Christmas feeling every day, year round. This is the Christmas spirit, the love of Christ.
It’s the love that allows me to look at each person, including my own
children, as a child of God, not an object to hurry by in the pursuit
of my own desires. The love that allows me to have peace and goodwill
in my heart, even if war is around me. This is the love of God, or
charity, or the fruit of the Tree of Life. Like it says in The
Christmas Chronicles, the true spirit of Christmas is to believe
in happiness for its own sake, and that hope and joy will overcome
cold and darkness.

 

How do we keep the love of God in our hearts? Besides the Sunday School answers of saying prayers, reading the scriptures, going to
Church, keeping the commandments and covenants, and doing temple work
and service, I have two other suggestions:

1. Read The Anatomy of Peace and other Arbinger Institute books. They show you step by step how to keep peace in your heart
with everyday challenges like thoughtless people and rude children.
http://arbinger.org
The books talk about looking at each person around you as a person,
instead of an “it” or object. Christ teaches us to take it
a step further and see everyone as a child of God, and therefore
family to us. How do we treat family? We should treat our family the best. The words “kind”
and “generous” both have roots that indicate kin or family.

2. Study history and learn the past so you can prepare and educate yourself to actively create a  future of peace as a parent and Latter-day Saint.

 

As I’ve been studying the past few years from history books that aren’t textbooks, I have learned that Thomas Jefferson wanted America
to be founded on ideas distinct and different from Europe’s. What
were these ideas? 1. Belief in rule of natural law, God’s law, or
people’s law, 2. Belief in the fatherhood of God, a just, perfect, being, and the brotherhood of mankind, and 3.
Belief in liberty. I call these ideas the Hebrew way.

 

Europe is founded on the Roman way. Contrast the Roman way with the Hebrew way by looking at these ideas of the Roman way: 1. Belief in ruler’s law, which can change any way or any time according
to the ruler’s whim, 2. Belief that mankind is not the family of God,
since the Roman way believes in no gods or made up gods like the
Roman gods who were capricious and sometimes wicked, and 3. Belief in
being told what to do, not exercising liberty. Richard Maybury, an
author, calls European history “a soap opera with guns.”
That’s because Europe is founded on these ideas. How noble.

I’ve studied history with these contrasting ideas in mind. I can see that America has become entrenched in the Roman way instead of
the Hebrew way. But America was founded on the Hebrew way.

 

Take WWI for instance. This was an unnecessary war for America. As Richard Maybury quotes in his book about WWI, “Why did we have to
go to war because some American wanted to cross the ocean to go to
the bathroom?” (Referring to the Lusitania.) Nevertheless we got embroiled in it. I guess we
wanted to be involved in a soap opera with guns. If you would like an eye-opening story, read Word War. The Rest of the Story by
Richard Maybury. (http://richardmaybury.com/books.html)

 

Here’s a quote from Woodrow Wilson, the man who told us that we had
to enter the Great War in order to keep the “world safe from
democracy.”

Why, my fellow citizens, is there any man here, or any woman-let me say, is there any child here, who does not know that the
seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial
rivalry?…This war, in its inception, was a commercial and
industrial war. It was not a political war. (The Papers of Woodrow
Wilson, ed. by Arthur S. Link, vol . 3, pp. 45-46.)

“A commercial and industrial war.” Um-hm. Sounds like a soap opera with guns to me.

 

A period emerged in WWI when soldiers forgot about treating the enemy as an “it” and saw the enemy as children of God, or spiritual brothers. The
soap opera started to fade away. It’s because the spirit of Christ,
the Christmas spirit, touched some soldiers’ hearts. It was the
Christmas Truce of 1914. I read the picture book version of this
story, Christmas in The Trenches by John McCutcheon, this
Christmas, to my children. It’s very touching. The Germans and the
Americans stopped fighting over Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day.
They cleared the wounded, helped each other bury the dead, exchanged
gifts and stories. They played soccer, sang Silent Night, and recited
the 23rd Psalm. They fraternized, or treated each other as brothers.
Now there’s a story you won’t read in a history textbook. Read more
here http://christmasinthetrenches.info/cmastruce.html

These men started fighting again only because they felt they had to obey orders. Sad. I wonder what could have happened if every single one of them refused.

 

Stanley Weintraub, who wrote, Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914, writes:

To many, the end of the war and the failure of the peace would validate the Christmas cease-fire as the only meaningful
apocalypse. It belied the bellicose slogans and suggested that the
men fighting and often dying were, as usual, proxies for governments
and issues that had little to do with their everyday lives. A candle
lit in the darkness of Flanders, the truce flickered briefly and
survives only in memoirs, letters, song, drama and story. (p. 194, A
Century of War by John Denson)

A poem by Frederick Niven of the WWI time era , “A Carol of Flanders,” has a line that captures my desire for all people to embody the Christmas spirit, the Hebrew way, all the time:

O ye who read this truthful rime from Flanders, kneel and say;

God speed the time when every day

Shall be as Christmas Day.

I’m happy that the ceremony, feasting, and presents part of Christmas is not every day. (Sure, I would love it if I didn’t have to be involved with any of the work.) I do wish that the Christmas spirit was around every day, in which we treat each other with that Christmas spirit of generosity

and kindness. Then the best presents of fraternization, patience,
and the benefit of the doubt would come forth from each of us. In
other words, “peace on earth, goodwill to men” like it says in
the Christmas carol.

 

 

This will only happen if we as parents learn how to keep our hearts at peace and learn the true history of why political wars have
been fought. It has not been to promote peace, or to save democracy
or freedom. The children who were born to us between 1980 and 2000
are fourth generation children. That means they are warriors who will
be called to fight a battle involved in some great crisis as they
come of age.  After 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, who knows what’s next. It’s looming on us ladies. Read The Fourth Turning.
If we want to keep our boys out of unnecessary wars fought for socialist, commercial, imperialistic ideas we have to know
this true history so we can recognize when these unnecessary wars are
happening again. We must teach our children along the way.

 

 

What would happen if the knowledge of true history and the commercial nature of WWI and most wars became as common as the knowledge that Mickey Mouse was created by Disney? What would happen if we mothers refused to let our boys join the army to go to war, and this refusal were a huge movement?

 

(My husband, his mother, and four of my five boys who I do not want to go to war for some socialist president who fights a commercial war.)

If you would like to study history this year with me looking at the Hebrew way vs. the Roman way, please join me in reading one book
a month and having an online discussion. I’m calling this “Freedom’s
Light: The Hebrew Way History Book Club.” Please go to my other web
site for education, http://tjedlibrary.ning.com/forum/topics/announcing-freedoms-light-or to see the list of books we will be studying and
to sign up.

I’ve also found some great audio files with lectures from LDS Church leaders and members like David O. McKay, Ezra Taft Benson, J.
Reuben Clark Jr., Scott Bradley, Jack Monnett, Cleon Skousen, and
Joel Skousen, to help learn about how the U.S. Government has strayed from the Hebrew Way. Go to http://latterdayconservative.com/downloads. I can’t
wait to dig into these!

 

Merry Christmas! May the Hebrew spirit always be with you!