Introducing Our FREE Christmas Novel – Miss Macintosh!
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
The words of Longfellow’s famous Christmas carol chime in as specially appropriate as we anticipate the return of another Christmas season. 2014 marks an important bicentennial in the history of North America. The feelings with which the citizens of the United States and Canada saw the first of December dawn two hundred years ago, must have been very mixed. Two years of war between the great English-speaking powers had brought tragedy and heartache to homes across the continent. Certainly many families could feel with the third verse of this carol:
“And in despair I bowed my head,
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
And yet out of this darkness there was to spring a light which has burnt, by God’s grace, without intermission for two hundred years since.
This story was written for my family during December of 2012. Each day between Christmas and the New Year they received one chapter, narrating the events of a family living on the Niagara border exactly 200 years before the day that they received it. This is the reason that the chapters are headed with the date of the day on which they are set. This story was my Christmas gift to my family during the two hundredth anniversary of the start of the war. It is my gift to you on the two hundredth anniversary of its end.
If you read each chapter the day it is issued, you will reach the conclusion on December 24, 2014 —the anniversary of the day on which the Treaty of Ghent brought the War of 1812 to a close. And this does, indeed, mark a triumph of peace on earth, good will to men. On this Christmas Eve we will have seen two full centuries of unbroken peace between the United States of America and the Dominion which is now Canada. From that day to this, the border which stretches from one side of the continent to the other has never seen warfare between the two nations which share it.
“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
Whether we see around us harmony or conflict, whether the world is at war or at peace, may this Christmas story bring you closer to the One who said:
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled . . .”
“Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!”
Merry Christmas!