A hope for tolerance at Christmas
The idea that the past has something to teach us is time-worn: we say it, but do we really mean it? Mostly, the answer is no. However, this particular moment in our national history may be, could be, the exception. If it happened once, it can happen again. Fingers crossed.
Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady during two great upheavals, the Great Depression and World II, wrote a widely-syndicated newspaper column called My Day. December 1941 was an especially ripe time for the column, for Mrs. Roosevelt, and for the nation.
Putting it mildly, that long-ago December was a tough time for the country. Reeling from the successful Japanese bombing of the U.S. Navy fleet tied at anchor in Pearl Harbor, it also faced a military juggernaut – the German army under Adolf Hitler – fresh off victories over most of the countries of Europe and presently engaged deep in the Soviet Union.
At home, anxiety gripped more than a few Americans. Some wanted to rip up the Constitution, in the belief that only iron-man rule could defeat the Nazis and win World War II.
In addition, enemy spies were thought to be everywhere. Suspicious eyes were cast on Americans with German and Italian blood running in their veins. Japanese-Americans were especially suspect.
It was a time when some basic tenets of American democracy were up for grabs – tenets such as tolerance, fairness, and the rule of law.
Enter Mrs. Roosevelt, the widely admired (widely reviled in some quarters) wife of President Franklin Roosevelt.
On Dec. 16, 1941, noting in My Day that “our people come from every part of the world,” she had this to say about getting along with one another and its consequences:
“If out of the present chaos, there is ever to come a world where people live peacefully together, we shall have to furnish the pattern…. If we cannot keep in check anti-semiticism, anti anti-racial feelings as well anti-religious feelings, then we shall have removed from the world the one real hope … on which all humanity must now rely.”
Mrs. Roosevelt declared, “This is the greatest test the country has ever met.”
Toward the end of the month, Mrs. Roosevelt returned to the theme of being the best versions of ourselves. Acting on principles that stretched back to the country’s founding, she said, was crucial, now that the United States was in a death-lock with evil itself. (We didn’t yet fully realize how evil, although there was some inkling of understanding of what was going on under Nazi rule.)
“This puts upon us in this country a tremendous responsibility to live up to our theories of democracy and make them a reality in every part of our country,” she said.
“We must live down our prejudices whatever they may be, and be sure that we make every act of ours conform to our Bill of Rights, and to the highest ideals of a democratic nation.”
On Christmas Day 1941, Mrs. Roosevelt noted that holiday merriment must be at a low ebb in Germany, despite recent victories on the battlefield.
“The control of other peoples through force and fear can never bring any real satisfaction,” she wrote. A kind soul, the first lady crucially misread the all too human instinct for brutality and repression.
Her primary focus, however, was on home. “We [must] preserve,” she wrote, “the spirit which lies back of Christmas and remember above everything else that when wars cease, goodwill to men must be paramount in our minds and in our actions.”
“… In the whole New Testament, which tells the story of a perfect life, I think there are to be found some principles of conduct which may perhaps be wise guides for our own conduct in these coming years.
“… Our ability to carry it through rests with the … understanding of the value placed by Christ on the individual. He never asked the race, the creed or the color of any individual when He could ameliorate their lot in any way.
“If at this Christmas season we can think of this whole story as a guide to our own future conduct as individuals and as a nation, we may be able to bring about a world in which there is ‘Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.'”
Today, as then, intolerance should have no place in American life, in this democratic society we’re still perfecting after 247 years of trying. Hate speech is wrong for America. It was wrong in 1941. It is wrong in 2023.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.