A Strange Christmas with a Special Christmas Guest

Christmas 1941 in the United States was an unusual and difficult one. Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, and the United States had entered World War II on December 8. It was a Christmas of much uncertainty. The country did, however, have a special holiday visitor! On December 22, Winston Churchill, the famous British Prime Minister, came to visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss war strategies. He stayed at the White House for three weeks.

On Christmas Eve, the Prime Minister and the President appeared together on the South Portico of the White House to a crowd of 30,000 people, who were there to see the lighting of the National Community Christmas Tree. When the sun started to go down, there was a prayer, some remarks by a Girl Scout and a Boy Scout, and Roosevelt lit the tree. The President then spoke briefly and offered the podium to his war ally. Churchill’s words were brotherly, encouraging, and alarming all at once. My favorite part was when he told Americans to “make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm.” Aren’t we still doing that today?

Go back to 1941 to that strange Christmas and read the Prime Minister’s full Christmas Eve message from the International Churchill Society below:

            "I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.  Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States.  I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome,  convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve.  Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other.  Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field.  Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.  Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm.  Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.  Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.  Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world. And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."

"Victoria was desperate to have her family back together, and she was determined to make this year their most festive Christmas ever. They all tried not to think about the war in connection with James, but even she in her more solemn moments recognized the possible consequences to her family."

Songbird, Chapter 42

Read or Listen to Songbird today!