WINSTON CHURCHILL ON CHRISTMAS EVE 1941

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot 

truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, 

or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding

sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same 

language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, 

I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I 

feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your 

welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas 

joys.


This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, 

with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each 

other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land 

or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the 

expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring 

over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the 

tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous 

heart.


Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, 

and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one 

night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted 

island of happiness and peace.


Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas 

delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we 

turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our 

sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied 

their right to live in a free and decent world.


And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.


-Winston Churchill