schmidlap
Platinum Member
- Oct 30, 2020
- 10,977
- 7,275
- 938
Exploiting his big moment, responding to cordial, apolitical Christmas greetings with a childish, hyper-partisan vulgarity is unfortunate, but is not a big deal.
The President isn’t hyper-sensitive or petty, so this pathetic case need not fear any vendettas.
Christmas can also evoke a transcendent decency:
... Then the stillness of the night on that Christmas Eve was broken. Some of the soldiers began singing Christmas carols. Other units up and down the front line began picking up the tune and singing it, from one army to another. And then the troops on the other side of no-man’s land began singing with them. The songs were the same, whether they were sung in Belgian, French, English or German. The meaning was the same. The memories of past Christmases were suddenly not so far away.
The soldiers shouted Christmas greetings to one another. Eventually, informal truces were arranged, and they agreed to come out of the trenches to greet one another in the spirit of Christmas. They did not wait for orders, they simply followed their hearts and their consciences. The troops walked toward each other, shook hands, and wished each other well. They put aside their arms and exchanged drinks, food, and small gifts of tobacco and chocolates from home.