Inside the Beltway: Reagan at Christmas: ‘We Americans have always tried to follow a higher light’

NEWS AND OPINION:

REAGAN’S FIRST CHRISTMAS MESSAGE, 1981

“Tonight, in millions of American homes, the glow of the Christmas tree is a reflection of the love Jesus taught us. Like the shepherds and wise men of that first Christmas, we Americans have always tried to follow a higher light, a star, if you will. At lonely campfire vigils along the frontier, in the darkest days of the Great Depression through war and peace, the twin beacons of faith and freedom have brightened the American sky. At times our footsteps may have faltered, but trusting in God’s help, we’ve never lost our way,” President Ronald Reagan noted in his Christmas greeting to the nation on live TV, broadcast Dec. 23, 1981.

“Just across the way from the White House stand the two great emblems of the holiday season: a Menorah, symbolizing the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, and the National Christmas Tree, a beautiful towering blue spruce from Pennsylvania. Like the National Christmas Tree, our country is a living, growing thing planted in rich American soil. Only our devoted care can bring it to full flower. So, let this holiday season be for us a time of rededication.”

Reagan later ended his speech with some candid reflections.

“Once, earlier in this century, an evil influence threatened that the lights were going out all over the world. Let the light of millions of candles in American homes give notice that the light of freedom is not going to be extinguished. We are blessed with a freedom and abundance denied to so many. Let those candles remind us that these blessings bring with them a solid obligation, an obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers and an obligation to the children of the world, whose future will be shaped by the way we live our lives today.”

GEORGE WASHINGTON AT CHRISTMAS, FROM ’JOYOUS TO TERRIFYING’

“So did George Washington even celebrate Christmas you might wonder? Well, yes he did. Christmas was an important religious holiday in Washington’s time and the twelve nights of Christmas, ending with balls and parties on January 6 that extended the holiday season. For Washington, his Christmas experiences range from the joyous to the terrifying, from the mundane to the celebratory,” report the historians of Mount Vernon, the longtime abode of the nation’s first president.

During Christmas in 1740, Washington’s boyhood home in Fredericksburg, Virginia burned down. The Washington family took shelter “in the detached kitchen and spent a cheerless Christmas Day,” the historians say. Christmas, 1751 found the future president dining on Irish goose and toasting the health of absent friends while aboard a ship returning to America from Barbados. Washington had visited his older brother Lawrence who was in the warmer climes seeking to cure his tuberculosis.

Two years later, Washington was on the western frontier with the Virginia militia. They spent Christmas eve at a spot called Murdering Town and had a skirmish with “French Indians,” the Mount Vernon account notes. “The next day, they crossed a river, visited an Indian ’Queen’ and gave her presents. Giving notable Native Americans presents was an established practice in frontier diplomacy.”

Washington spent his Christmas in 1755 “writing orders while stationed in Winchester, Virginia.”

His life took a domestic turn in 1758.

“In anticipation of upcoming changes due to his election to the House of Burgesses and his imminent marriage, George Washington resigned his military commission to take up life as a husband, planter, and burgess. On Saturday, January 6, 1759 George Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis on the twelfth night of Christmas.”

By 1770, just as a pivotal era was about to begin, Washington spent much of this Christmas in “typical plantation activities, foxhunting with friends and family and visiting his mill. He attended services at Pohick Church and had dinner at home with his family.”

HOLIDAYS, EXOPLANET STYLE

“Santa’s winter workshop might be in space,” suggests Britain’s University of Warwick, where scientists are exploring whether snowy moons such as Enceladus — orbiting Saturn at some 790 million miles from Earth — are potentially habitable. Lead researcher David Brown and his colleagues at the Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability on the campus say life could be supported on such frosty moon,moons of ice and snow, particularly those with vast oceans under their frozen surfaces.

“Life could thrive there thanks to large amounts of water which may already be home to microbial life, underneath the icy surface, which can protect beings from harmful ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays,” the researchers reason. “Regular mixing of the water from changes in temperature and pressure, and the potential for hydrothermal vents like the ones we see in Earth’s oceans, would also encourage life to be sustained.”

“Living in a never-ending landscape of snow and ice all year might not seem particularly inviting, even for Santa! But these moons represent some of the best chances for life beyond Earth in the solar system, and are environments that we’re very interested in exploring,”notes Mr. Brown.

This is an abbreviated Beltway Bulletin from Jennifer Harper, on vacation this week.