‘vacant chair’ Christmas

From the Richmond Daily Dispatch December 24, 1864:

Saturday morning….December 24, 1864.
Christmas.

Christmas has come again, and though shorn of some of its old accessories of feasts and frolics, it is Christmas still in all that constitutes its essential glory. Its light shines through a clouded sky; but it is the light of the Star of Bethlehem, which is only more luminous and beautiful when earthly hopes have set, and are no longer able to rival or eclipse its calm and benignant radiance.

This time-hallowed festival, the oldest and most universal in the Christian world, has been ever cherished with peculiar love and reverence by the people of our sunny land. Whilst Puritanism has always frowned upon it with a sour and austere visage, as it has upon every cheerful and innocent enjoyment of man, Christmas has come down to us from a Cavalier ancestry with untarnished honors, and is welcomed as the Queen of Festivals in every heart and every home. It may be that we cannot celebrate it now with the profusion and revelry of former days; but it never ought to have been a day of revelry, and enough is left us of the necessaries of life to minister to our wants and the demands of hospitality and charity. This is the season, above all others, when we should remember the poor and suffering, and prove by our own experience how much more blessed it is to give than to receive.

dead Confederates near Spottsylvania, May 1864

Incongruous and inconsistent as excess and intemperance have ever been in the celebration of such a festival, they would be peculiarly disgusting and shocking in this hour of national trial. There is a time for all things — a time to laugh and a time to weep — certainly this is not the time for insensate joy. There is scarcely a fireside in the Confederacy which has not a vacant chair in the Christmas circle. The father, the husband, the brother, gone forever, or miserable captives in Northern prisons. The very homes of thousands have disappeared from the face of the earth; fruitful regions transformed into deserts; battle-fields white with the bones of the unburied dead; hospitals crowded with sick and dying, and countless hearts breaking with the agonies of late bereavement. Or, if the sorrows of others cannot touch our sensibilities, the possibility that their fate may be our own should serve to chasten the exuberance of natures which have never known affliction, and which can fill high the cup of revelry and dance with light hearts amidst such calamities as have rarely visited the human race. With a vast army at our very doors thirsting for our destruction, and a powerful Government preparing to strike one more, and that a colossal blow, it would better become us, like the people of Nineveh, to wear sackcloth and ashes, and, upon our bended knees, invoke the Almighty to spare his people, than to mark the hallowed festival of Christmas by scenes of intemperance and dissipation. Common respect for the sorrows of those who have suffered so fearfully by this war, and an intelligent love of our own future happiness, alike teach us to be moderate in our enjoyments, and to remember the words of the prophet, reproving the Jews for their worldly joy during the invasion of their country by the Persians: “And in that day did the Lord God of Hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die. And it was revealed in nine years by the Lord of Hosts. Surely, this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the Lord God of Hosts.”

If ever, then, Christmas should be observed in its true character of a religious festival, it is the present anniversary. Amid all our tribulations, one deep, unfailing fountain of joy and consolation remains — that Christ was born. Amid the overhanging darkness shines a light which may cheer the saddest and calm the gayest heart. Amid the tumult of human passions and the clangor of battle, still sound those angelic strains which ravished the shepherd’s ears, heralding the birth of the Prince of Peace. Peace! Blessed word! What richer gift could Heaven have offered to earth? We, at least, can appreciate the full significance of such a gift, and with lowly adoration bend at the altar of the Lamb of God, and, while We lament these evil passions which have disowned his benignant sway, beseech Him that when another Christmas comes we may be able to echo from earth to heaven the song of Bethlehem–“Peace on earth, good will among men.”

The Dispatch.

As to-morrow will be Christmas day, no paper will be issued from this office until Tuesday next.