VOL. II, NO. 6
DECEMBER 16, 1960

1973 Brings No Freedom of Worship
by Richard Pate, '64

The Sarona family huddled about their large but quite inefficient fire. About them the bleak shadow of winter hung. All of them were quite restless, but the head of the family was lost in deep thought. What he was thinking, what secret dream he fancied, no one knew. Then by degrees, he became aware of his unsettled group. Slowly, he began to whisper a word privately with his wife. Scurrying across the wet leaf floor to a part of the wall hardly distinguishable from the other clay sides, she squatted down on her knees and proceeded to uncover a small section of dirt. With the graveness of fear in her eyes, she handed her hidden prossession to her husband. Straightening up, he told the children to move around him. Then he began to speak and from his mouth came the sacred words of Christmas and all its holiness. Words that were hardly ever dared spoken and then only on this night of the holy of holies. The words were of the first Christmas, how Christ was born in a stable for "there was no room for Him in the inn," and how the Wise Men came to worship Him.
 Suddenly there was a sharp rap on the door, then a succession of raps. The poorly constructed door burst open. There were soldiers. Soldiers of the state, not the people. The father, in silent fear, stood up bravely and offered himself to the police. But he knew all would have to pay the consequences . . . the children, who were innocent, would also suffer, but for something they did not understand. For the law says, "No one shall, at any time or for any reason, worship any God or gods . . . 11 and so it read on. This of course meant the reading of any religious book. The penalty-death.

And so, on the eve of Christmas, 1973, a God-fearing family can be seen accompanied by six soldiers on their way to one of the many death houses.

Yes, this is not the year 25 or 100, but the year 1973 A.D. The place: a suburb just outside of Kansas City, Missouri.

This is the price men pay when freedom is demolished. But there is another message behind this story: Even when war had crippled him, fear had broken him, freedom had been denied him, and sickness and death had crushed him, the reverent love for the sacred feast of Christmas still lived on in the heart of man.