Ron and Daniel wish all our viewers a Merry Christmas. What does Christmas mean to us? What about the Christmas Truce of 1914? Tune in to a special edition of the Liberty Report!
Ron and Daniel wish all our viewers a Merry Christmas. What does Christmas mean to us? What about the Christmas Truce of 1914? Tune in to a special edition of the Liberty Report!
Ron and Daniel wish all our viewers a Merry Christmas. What does Christmas mean to us? What about the Christmas Truce of 1914? Tune in to a special edition of the Liberty Report!
Welcome to the program and Merry Christmas to everybody.
Merry Christmas, Daniel, and good to see you here as our co-host as usual.
Yes, Merry Christmas.
Good.
I'm sure you have plans for the day, as our family has, and will you be having some family at your house?
We've got some family in our house, and we won't be building Snowman, unfortunately, because we're down in Texas, but we may have a barbecue.
Who knows?
Yes, and I'm sure that wherever we go in our family, there will be lots of fun because we will have a lot of people at our house.
I was going to say you have a full house, don't you?
Yeah, we sort of went backwards.
We delayed the building of our house for many, many years, although I bought property way back in 1969.
I never built a house until I got out of Congress, you know.
But we built a big house because the family was close by and we wanted people to come visit.
So when it comes to Christmas or Thanksgiving, the family comes, and we have a full house, and that was one thing that Carol always wanted was a place where we could all get together in one room.
So we will be there, and we'll have a good time.
But I wanted to just take a minute to reflect on maybe some of the things that we noticed different from when we first remember Christmas.
And the one thing that I have noticed, which is not something too astounding, but the difference between the Christmases now versus the Christmases that I was aware of as a child is the commercialization and the de-emphasis on anything religious, you know.
And we didn't have that much commercialism when I was young because I was born in 1935.
It was a Depression.
Depression lasted throughout World War II.
So as a young person, we always had Christmas.
There was always an emphasis whether the war was going on or not.
We had quite a few members in our family in the service.
And it was still very important, but it was mostly religious, going to church on Christmas Eve and emphasizing the religious aspect of Christmas.
And then later on, it morphed into, we still had presents.
There was always something.
We got something.
But it was modest.
But it never seemed like we were victims or why isn't this a shame?
And why didn't they get this?
I don't remember any of that.
And now today, it seems like there's a temptation for some people and some families to have a lot and then somebody not being happy.
Well, I wanted a computer, you know, that sort of thing.
It's true.
You know, I don't watch TV very much, but I watch occasional NFL games.
And the Christmas season is terrible.
Every other commercial, you got to get a car for somebody or you're terrible.
You know, Christmas is all about getting a Lexus or something.
It's pretty remarkable.
You know, they said that this year is good for business.
They're at a 12-year high on spending for business.
But there's a catch to it.
You know, they may say, well, there's a lot of people who are generous.
They're doing well.
And they want to share.
But it's probably not quite that simple because it's done on borrowed money.
Oh, no.
You know, some of the principles that I learned as a young person, even in a religious sense, that, you know, sound money was gold and silver and you had honest weights and measures.
But here we live in an age where extravagance is something that just goes on and you have to prove that you're doing well.
And to think that so much of that purchasing is done by borrowing money, but eventually somebody's going to have to pay for it.
So I think that, you know, gift giving is good, but I don't see any reason why people should go into debt to try to make a point.
Sometimes a homemade gift means a lot, a lot more.
My wife does a lot of sewing and quilt making.
Believe me, there's a lot of value to what she does.
And I spent a lot of Christmases in Hungary when I lived there, and they have a very different system.
Gifts, it's not about gifts at all.
Different Gifts, Different Peace00:05:11
There'll be a little Christ market in the middle of town with a lot of them are homespun gifts, things made with beeswax, beeswax candles and things.
And you'll just go get a little something for someone, a little token, but it's more about maybe having some spiced cider and spiced wine and mingling and getting together.
So the gifts, at least the last time I was there, were very de-emphasized.
So that was nice, I think.
Yes, and of course it was emphasized to us at home about the religious aspects of Christianity.
And I remember early on in some of my catechism classes and all, and it was putting it together what Christianity was all about.
And it sounded like it was about peace and love.
And I had come to a conclusion, erroneously, as a young person that, oh, Christianity means peace.
Therefore, you will never find two Christian countries fighting each other.
And I thought, well, I finally woke up as time went on that there were too many examples where that didn't hold true, which shows the shortcoming.
But I liked the part that I heard about the Prince of Peace.
It was very attractive, and it's a wonder that we don't have that much emphasis on that now.
And of course, the Prince of Peace is supposed to be Christ.
And yet, blessed are the peacemakers.
Right now, there are some people who are associated with Christian organization.
They'd almost say it's blessed are the warmongers.
Because if you don't support all the wars, they challenge our patriotism and maybe even our religious beliefs.
And that to me always bothers me because, of course, I was challenged a few times when I was campaigning, trying to emphasize this without being religious about it.
It wasn't like pushing my religion down everybody's throat, but it was just the principles I've learned.
And these were in audiences that, you know, would claim, oh, no, we agree with you on who the Prince of Peace is.
The Bible bells.
Yeah, but they didn't follow through on it.
Yeah, the idea, first you got to kill all your enemies, then you can have peace.
Yeah, very true.
But I do want to bring up something I put in Swords into Plowshares.
It's a famous story.
It wasn't a story I discovered.
It's been around for a long time.
There's a book about it, and there's a movie about it.
And that is that special Christmas Eve on the front lines in 1914 on Christmas Eve between the British and the Germans.
They must have sort of been thinking about, well, I thought the two Christian nations shouldn't be fighting each other.
And the story, of course, is, and I write about this, but there's a lot of stories about it, that the two together, it was Christmas Eve, and nobody seemed to want to connect.
Maybe the shooting died down at dark.
But then, because it was Christmas Eve, one side started singing Christmas carols.
It's an interesting story.
And the other side started responding, and they finally, you know, slowly crept together, got together, and exchanged gifts and made a Christmas tree.
And that to me is, you know, in spite of the evilness of our governments, because it's evil old people that want young kids to go and fight wars.
These people wanted to get.
I'm sure there were a lot of young people involved.
And they got together and they had peaceful gathering.
It lasted for several days, but it ended when the officers on both sides said, No way, you will go back to killing each other.
And that is what happened.
This was early in World War I, and who knows, some of them lived to tell about this story, but I'm sure many did not live and they went back to fighting.
And I think there's so much of that warmongering is unnecessary.
And I think this whole idea of non-aggression and a prince of peace, and we should bless the peacemakers, you know, as the children of God.
That's what we have been told.
But right now, peace isn't as popular as I would like it to be.
They talk about it.
Everybody's for peace on their terms.
Yeah, we're for peace if you do what we tell you.
But that's not the attitude that I had been taught.
Well, this is something that we're working for, and let's hope that as Christmas comes and goes and the new year comes, we maybe have some influence, we'll get some more friends, and we'll make our case a lot more.
So I do want to thank and say Merry Christmas to our audience.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and we look forward to meeting you again next year.
I want to thank everybody for joining us today on Christmas.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas.
And I will continue to emphasize the peaceful nations.
Matter of fact, most religions are very peaceful.
And I think that I would just urge people to be peacemakers and not warmongers.