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As I write, there are only twenty-five shopping days remaining until Christmas.\u00a0 But I hope that, amidst all of the frenetic activity that precedes the biggest holiday of the year, we\u2019ll all be able to find at least a little bit of time for reflection.<\/p>\n
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Here is something that I wrote for Christmas 2012.\u00a0 It hadn\u2019t been a good year for me.\u00a0 In fact, it was the worst year of my life.\u00a0 Among other things, suddenly and without warning I had lost my brother, my only sibling, in March of that year.\u00a0 (We were unusually close; my parents were already gone.)\u00a0 And then, only three months later, after nearly thirty pleasant years that had been almost completely free of even the slightest whiff of academic politics, I ran, without forewarning, right into a life-altering concentration<\/em> of such politics that more<\/em> than compensated for the previous long interval of serene career satisfaction.\u00a0 And my mother in law was grievously ill with the disease that would take her life the following spring.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Now, re-reading the column below with the benefit of hindsight, I think that the previous months must have subconsciously influenced the approach to Christmas that I adopted in it:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n His first wife, Mary, died after a miscarriage.\u00a0 His second wife, Fanny, died in a freak household fire.\u00a0 Trying to save her, he himself was burned so badly that he couldn\u2019t attend her funeral and, for the remaining decades of his life, couldn\u2019t shave.\u00a0 His iconic image, still today, features a long white patriarchal beard.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHow inexpressibly sad are all holidays,\u201d he wrote on the first Christmas after Fanny\u2019s death. \u00a0One year after her passing, he commented, \u201cI can make no record of these days.\u00a0 Better leave them wrapped in silence. Perhaps someday God will give me peace.\u201d His journal entry for 25 December 1862 reads: \u201c\u2018A merry Christmas\u2019 say the children, but that is no more for me.\u201d\u00a0 Late in 1863, his eldest son, Charles, was severely wounded fighting for the Union in the American Civil War.\u00a0 Longfellow made no journal entry at all for Christmas that year.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI heard the bells on Christmas Day,\u201d he wrote on 25 December 1864.\u00a0 But the war still raged, and he was still in pain. \u00a0\u201cAnd in despair I bowed my head: \u2018There is no peace on earth,\u2019 I said. \u2018For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.\u201d\u00a0 But then his mood shifted.\u00a0 \u201cThen pealed the bells more loud and deep: \u2018God is not dead, nor doth he sleep; the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.'\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mere words are wholly inadequate in the face of great human suffering, brought home to us in an especially horrifying way by last week\u2019s report from Newtown, Connecticut.\u00a0 However, the central idea of Christianity, which we celebrate at this very season, is that God hasn\u2019t confined himself to mere words.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Word was made flesh,\u201d reports John, \u201cand dwelt among us.\u201d\u00a0 And, therefore, \u201cthe Light shineth in darkness\u201d (John 1:14, 5).\u00a0 The God of Christianity is no unmoved mover, no absentee landlord, distant and unfeeling\u2014let alone a hanging judge, a kind of cosmic Inspector Javert.\u00a0 Describing the Savior\u2019s response to the death of his friend Lazarus, John 11:35 is the shortest verse in scripture but among the most significant:\u00a0 \u201cJesus wept.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThen said the Jews,\u201d in the next verse, \u201cBehold how he loved him!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Christmas is a child\u2019s holiday, a day of wonders for kids.\u00a0 But it\u2019s infinitely more.<\/span><\/p>\n Almost a century before the Savior\u2019s birth in Palestine, the New World prophet Alma explained that Jehovah would come to earth, among other reasons, \u201cthat he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities\u201d (Alma 7:12).<\/span><\/p>\n The Prophet Joseph Smith learned by revelation in 1832 that Christ \u201cascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth\u201d\u00a0 (D&C 88:6).<\/span><\/p>\n There is no sorrow, no despair, no pain, no hopelessness that the Lord doesn\u2019t know from direct experience.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t just read about these things in a book.<\/span><\/p>\n In March 1839, Joseph Smith languished miserably in the jail at Liberty, Missouri, while his people, because of their trust in his teaching, were being driven from their homes during a brutal Midwestern winter.\u00a0 Seeking divine comfort, he was given an appalling list of sufferings and injustices and then gently reminded that \u201cThe Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?\u201d\u00a0 (D&C 122:8).<\/span><\/p>\n The comfort seldom comes instantly.\u00a0 \u201cThine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment,\u201d said a revelation to Joseph (D&C 121:7).\u00a0 However, they lasted more than five years, ending only with his death at the hands of a mob.<\/span><\/p>\n But Julian of Norwich, the early English mystic (d. 1416), was nonetheless right when, under inspiration (as she claimed), she summed up her Christian hope in the simple words \u201cAll shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And this is true only because the Savior (Immanuel, \u201cGod with us\u201d) came into the world.\u00a0 The light of Christmas shines even brighter after the darkness of Newtown.\u00a0 Because he lives, its victims shall live also.\u00a0 (See John 14:19.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away\u201d (Revelation 21:4).<\/span><\/p>\n