Dec 20, 2025 3 min read

It’s now so deeply enmeshed in our culture that almost everyone knows how the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” unfolds, and how frustrated, dispirited and despondent George Bailey finds reasons to live and embrace the small town he had once longed to escape.

The Christmas Eve where George Bailey’s epiphany occurs is 1945, and though the date figures into the plot only marginally, Americans had plenty of reasons to both celebrate and be wary during that holiday season eight decades ago. Troops were coming home from wars in Europe and Asia, though many were not – more than 400,000 Americans died in World War II. That’s a colossal number, but it was only one-half of 1% of the 80 million people who perished in that epic conflagration.

Many of the soldiers who did come home were plagued by post-traumatic stress disorder and the trials of becoming reacquainted with spouses and families they had not seen for three years. There was economic dislocation in the adjustment to a peacetime economy, and the growing chill of a Cold War. On Dec. 24, 1945, there were plenty of reasons to sleep uneasily.

An editorial in Uniontown’s Morning Herald that day emphasized the “turmoil and misery as a result of the great World War,” and noted “the less fortunate millions of children and adults in Europe, Asia, Africa in fact all over the globe.”

Yet, the editorial noted the enviable position the United States was in. It was “the strongest, richest, fattest nation on Earth, without one city devastated by war.”

That was a cause for thanks 80 years ago. And even though Americans – and lots of other people in other parts of the world – have been in a persistently sour mood for much of 2025, we still have much to be glad about as Christmas, Hanukkah and other December holidays bring the curtain down on this year.

Despite bloody wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, we are living in a relatively peaceful time, one of the most peaceful in history. Despite justified concerns about the cost of housing, health care, food and other necessities of life, the United States remains a rich and prosperous country. For much of the 21st century, it’s been a country divided, whether by red states and blue states, or by cultural and economic issues. It seems unlikely that those will be meaningfully resolved in the year ahead.

And, yet, if we can see our own common humanity and reflect on that this holiday season, those divides might ultimately be bridged and our country’s wounds can heal.

Merry Christmas.