Dear parents!
I can only write you a Christmas letter in advance, just in case. (…) I don’t need to tell you how much I long for freedom and for all of you. For decades, you have prepared such incomparably beautiful Christmases for us that the grateful memory of them is already strong enough to enlighten even the darker Christmases. In such times, it really shows what it means to have one’s own past and inner heritage that does not depend on the changes of time and chance. The awareness that we are carried by a centuries-old spiritual tradition gives a person a reliable sense of security in the midst of transient troubles. I believe that those who know of such personal reserves of strength need not be ashamed of any certain emotion that is evoked by the memory of a rich and good past (…).
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer /1906–1945/, letter from Nazi prison, December 17, 1943;
quoted from the book Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Resistance and Submission, Letters from Prison, Kalich 2023)
