Christmas In the Year 2000

1895

But the evening is wearing on toward midnight. The moment must be at hand when the first sunbeam shall flash on Bethlehem and give the signal for the world round trumpet chorus which is to usher in the two thousandth Christmas dawn. Two thousand years the herald angels have waited for the answer to their song. Now at last we can echo back their benison of "Peace on earth" with "Peace indeed," writes Edward Bellamy in his optimistic view of "Christmas In the Year 2000" in The Ladies' Home Journal.

There is something that appeals to the sense of fitness in this idea of making the celebration of the day simultaneous in every land; in the thought that with the first note of the trumpets, whether it be midnight, dawn or evening, it will be that moment Christmas morning everywhere. Other feast days we may wait for as they slowly dawn around the earth, ending here ere at the antipodes they begin, but this day, sacred to the tie of universal human brotherhood, should have no moment that all mankind does not share in common.