Remembering at Christmas

Christmas is a time of joy. Joy for the birth of our Savior after the anticipation of the advent season. Joy for the time we spend with family, remembering old memories and creating new ones. Joy for the opportunity to pause and reflect on our blessings, while looking forward to the year ahead.

Each year, I share a Christmas message from President Reagan because he so optimistically communicated Americans’ reverence for the past and hopes for a better future. This holds true for his 1986 Christmas message, which evokes sights and sounds of the season and the coming of the Christ child, while also reminding us to remember those who may be spending the holiday alone. Together, his words invite us to celebrate the joy of Christmas while extending compassion and hope to all, especially those who may be feeling forgotten this season.

I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. 

President Ronald Reagan 

Message on Observance of Christmas 

December 11, 1986 

Every December across America the images of the Christmas season accumulate as this great holiday approaches. Preparations are made in homes and churches and shops in every city and town, and the land is full of traditional signs and symbols of its coming: Fresh snow resting lightly on the holly bush, package-laden crowds crushing the storefronts and bus stops, strings of lights gleaming from the housetops, chestnut vendors and street corner Santas, school plays with children dressed -- hardly needing the costume -- as angels, and choirs joining heart and voice in joyous song.

Because of these traditions, no Christmas celebration truly stands alone. For most of us, the holidays bring back such a trove of memories, evoked by things as simple as the scent of pine or the painted scene on a greeting card, that our Christmases become not separate events on a calendar but a chain in which all are linked together as one. This is as it should be, for Christmas is a holiday that we celebrate not as individuals nor as a nation, but as a human family -- and not merely as a family living in this age and time, but as a family linked through history, in ways we still cannot fully comprehend, to that First Christmas in Bethlehem.

May our prayers this Christmas call forth that serenity of heart and confidence in the future that are the best of all possible gifts. May the song of our people be one of thanks for God's blessings on America and of petition for His continued blessings upon us, especially on those who face this Christmas in want or loneliness. Let us raise our hearts and voices in common song for the reign of peace and the rule of goodwill, that in the words of the carol, all may celebrate "everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight.''