A Christmas Message of Hope 

The following was composed by Richard N. Hughes, a former executive at WPIX Channel 11 in New York and was broadcast every year prior to the Yule Log from 1974 to 1989. It’s message is just as beautiful, meaningful and relevant today as was then . . . perhaps even more so. 

Christmas is many things. It is a time for giving ... a time for receiving ... a time for putting away, for a little while, the cares and worries of the world, and rejoicing in the promise which is embodied in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. 

While this day is most sacred and the promise most meaningful to the Christian world, there is a message in it for all mankind. It is a message which the world never quite remembers but has never quite forgotten. 

For the message of Christmas is the message of God's Love. And God's Love involves hope and promise for an improving future. 

If you were to compare our times with the time when Jesus was born, you would find great similarity. Like our time, it was a period of great unrest. It was a time when many prophets spoke with many tongues. It was a time when the problems seemed overwhelming. 

But into that time, Hope was born, in the person of the Child who was to become, for a great part of the world, the embodiment of the salvation of the humankind. 

There is important meaning for Christian and non-Christian in His brief lifetime, because this Man taught that love is the one sure source of healing for the human condition. He taught the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man. He taught that this earthly life is not the end for the human spirit. He taught that each man is accountable for his actions, but most of all, He taught the doctrine of Hope. Hope for the future in the promise that the result of goodness is Godliness. And, more than any other person in history, Jesus taught us to respect the Godliness in ourselves, and to give it expression by doing God's work in the world. 

The gifts which we give this Christmas Season, as symbols of God's great gift to the world, will pass and be forgotten. But the gift of Hope, as embodied in the Christ, will live eternally. 

For Hope is the life which springs eternal in mankind. 

At this Christmas Season, we wish you the best of the season ... and the best is the sure knowledge that there is cause to hope, if we will but accept the responsibility for bridging the gaps and healing the wounds in our society, and if, whatever our religious beliefs, we will, in Jesus' words, "Be of good cheer"