Harry Reasoner on Christmas

In 1968 (I think), I happened to be watching the “60 Minutes” program on CBS. At that time, it wasn’t a program I watched regularly, but I was watching the night that Harry Reasoner gave a commentary on Christmas.

Harry Reasoner was one of my favorite TV journalists. He was calm and quiet (most of the time), seemed friendly, dryly humorous, and had a great, relaxing voice. I didn’t always understand his points, but he was interesting to listen to. He probably would have made a great neighbor.

On that night in 1968, he gave a memorable Christmas message. I was not a believer at the time, but it struck me nonetheless. Here was a well known national broadcaster talking about Christmas. And he seemed in favor of the real message of Christmas. Too bad that I couldn’t remember the commentary, and in those days finding a written version would have been almost impossible. Commentary given, then lost to the ether.

Below is a version of Reasoner’s message that I found on the Internet a few years ago. I hope it could be found in one of Reasoner’s books.  It is also supposed to be in “The Everything Christmas Book”, 2nd edition (which apparently isn’t the edition my local library has).

I hope you enjoy it, and that it gives you something to think about.

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The basis for this tremendous annual burst of buying things and gift giving and parties and near hysteria is a quiet event that Christians believe actually happened a long time ago. You can say that in all societies there has always been a midwinter festival and that many of the trappings of our Christmas are almost violently pagan. But you come back to the central fact of the day in the quietness of Christmas morning. The birth of God on earth. It leaves you only three ways of accepting Christmas.

One is cynically: as a time to make money or endorse the making of it.

One is graciously: the appropriate attitude for non-Christians in a largely Christian society, who wish their fellow citizens all the joys to which their beliefs entitle them.

And the third, of course, is reverently. If this is the anniversary of the appearance of the Lord of the Universe in the form of a helpless baby, then it is a very important day.

It’s a startling idea, of course. My guess is that the whole story — that a virgin was selected by God to bear His Son as a way of showing His love and concern for man — it’s my guess that, in spite of all the lip service they have given it, it is not an idea that has been popular with theologians. It’s a somewhat illogical idea, and theologians love logic almost as much as they love God.

It’s so revolutionary an idea that it probably could only have come from a God Who is beyond logic and beyond theology. It has a magnificent appeal. Almost nobody has seen God and almost nobody has any real idea of what He is like — and the truth is that among men, the idea of seeing God, suddenly and standing in a very bright light, is not necessarily a completely comforting and appealing thought.

But everyone has seen babies. And most people like them. If God wanted to be loved as well as feared, He moved correctly here. If He wanted to know His people as well as rule them, He moved correctly here, for a baby growing up learns all about people. If God wanted to be intimately a part of man, He moved correctly here, for the experience of birth and familyhood is our most intimate and precious experience.

So it comes beyond logic. It is what Bishop Karl Morgan Block used to call a kind of divine insanity. It is either a falsehood or it is the truest thing in the world. It either rises above the tawdriness of what we make of Christmas or it is part of it and completely irrelevant.

It is the story of the great innocence of God, the baby God in the power of man.

And it is such a dramatic shot for the heart, that if it is not true for Christians, nothing else is, because this story reaches Christians universally and with profound emotion.

So, if a Christian is touched only once a year, the touching is still worth it, and maybe on some given Christmas, some final quiet morning, the touch will take.

Because the message of Christmas IS the Christmas Story. If it is false, we are doomed. If it is true, as it must be, it makes everything else in the world all right.

– Harry Reasoner, 60 Minutes, “What Christ Looked Like,” Christmas Eve, 1968.

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. 1 Corinthians 15:19 (NIV)