Tuesday, December 24, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 24th of December 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A very happy Christmas Eve, however you count the days and nights. Some will start celebrating at sundown, and others might worship this evening in preparation for family festivities. Do remember that unless Christmas Eve or Christmas fell on a Sunday, many Puritans would expressly forbid Churches from having special services. It was the first war on Christmas (well, there’s Herod).  

Today, I get to tell you one of my favorite stories, one I may have never told before. It is the story of that fateful year, 1968, and the Apollo 8 Mission to the moon.

1968 is one of those red letter years that, according to one author, was “a year of sorrow, suffering, massive bloodshed”- from assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy, the ongoing Vietnam War, riots at the DNC in Chicago…

And there was tension too, at NASA. It was the deceased John F. Kennedy who promised to get to the moon by decades end. And as of 1968, it wasn’t looking good. Initially, the Apollo 8 would have a lunar module, but that was scrapped. But this would be the first Lunar orbit- a remarkable feat in and of itself.  

Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman were chosen for the trip. Knowing the magnitude of the trip, just before Christmas, the men planned to broadcast from Apollo 8—what would have been the most simultaneously listened-to broadcast of all time at the time.

The astronauts could not decide the tone or content of the message. In these tumultuous years, everything could sound like an implicit criticism of the current system or an implicit attack on the establishment.

Joseph Laitin came from Washington to assist. He thought something from Scripture might be good. His wife, Christine Laitin, a Frenchwoman trained in a convent and at the Sorbonne, suggested something from Genesis—something universal. Little did she know how perfect it would be.

The first 10 verses of the book of Genesis were printed on a fire-proof surface and sent with the mission.

They would enter the moon's orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1968.

As they made their first orbit, they were to use the limited film they had on the moon, but what they saw took their breath away. No humans had ever been that far from Earth before, and these men saw, coming around the moon's surface, the perfect blue marble- earth. Borman said they were sent up there to study the moon, but they ended up discovering a new view and vantage point on the globe- making it all the more memorable when Bill Anders began his reading: We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you”.

They would finish, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

Despite being a relatively tame text, some were upset that this somehow broke the inviolable separation of church and state, but those cases went nowhere. There was something about that perspective—all of us on a little ball, together in a small outpost—seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of themes—and recognizing in some way the God who created it Good and was going to recreate it, starting in an obscure outpost in the seemingly insignificant town of Bethlehem.

 A fun end: They left orbit on Christmas Day, and they had to go into radio silence it was broken when Apollo 8 came back online, with Jim Lovell on the radio from space saying, “Roger, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”

 

The last word for today is from Genesis 1-10, in the King James as the men read from so many years ago on this day: 

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

X 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 24th of December 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man with questions about the whole “moon gimmick” he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who wonders why Roger cares so much about Santa Claus. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.