The World and Everything in It: December 23, 2024

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The government loves its regulations, except when it doesn’t.

GORSUCH: You’re running from your regulations. I mean, it’s sort of like garlic in front of a vampire. You don’t want to have anything to do with them.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat, Economist David Bahnsen is standing by, and I’ll ask what message the Capitol Hill spending kerfuffle has on markets.

And the WORLD History Book today Christmas in a time of war:

HISTORY BOOK: ‘Tomorrow, you no shoot, we no shoot.’ And the morning came and we didn’t shoot and they didn’t shoot.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, December 23rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: U.S. pilots shot down via friendly fire over Red Sea » Two American Navy pilots have survived a friendly fire shootdown over the Red Sea.

The U.S. military says the USS Gettysburg mistakenly fired upon and hit the F/A-18 Sunday, with both pilots aboard the plane. They ejected and are okay, though one has minor injuries.

The U.S. has stepped up its military presence in the area over the past year… conducting airstrikes to counter attacks on commercial ships by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in nearby Yemen.

SAREE: [Speaking Arabic]

That’s Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree, claiming responsibility for Sunday’s shootdown, saying, without evidence, that Houthi forces -quote- “foiled a U.S.-UK attack on Yemen.” Saree has made several false claims about striking U.S. military assets in the past.

The Pentagon won’t say what the shot-down pilots’ mission was or how their plane could’ve been mistaken for an enemy aircraft or missile.

Israel, Hamas closing in on ceasefire as Gaza strike kills 22 » Leaders on both sides of America’s political aisle are hopeful Israel and the terror group Hamas are closer to a ceasefire than they’ve been in months. Last week, both Israel and Hamas expressed optimism that a deal could be reached soon to free the hostages and end the fighting in Gaza.

President-elect Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Congressman Michael Waltz, told Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures…

WALTZ: We are cautiously optimistic. The deal-making is happening right now as we speak.”

People involved in the talks say the two sides are trying to work through key sticking points.

In the meantime, the fighting continues in Gaza where Israeli airstrikes killed at least 22 people over the weekend, according to Palestinian health officials.

U.S. special envoy in Syria for Austin Tice search » A top envoy from the White House is in Syria keeping the search for the missing American journalist Austin Tice on the radar of the country’s new leaders.

Tice disappeared in Syria 12 years ago. The Biden Administration says it’s committed to bringing him home after rebels overthrew Syria’s totalitarian leader, Bashar al-Assad, this month.

U.S. Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens tells CBS’s Face the Nation…

CARSTENS: We have to help, or rather, work with, our interim authority’s officials to make sure that we do a good search so that I can one day look Debra Tice in the eyes and tell them that our search has been exhaustive.

Debra Tice is Austin’s mother. The White House says it believes Austin Tice is still alive, but hasn’t elaborated.

German Christmas Market suspect made previous online threats » The man accused of ramming his car into a Christmas market, killing at least 5 people and hurting 200 more in Germany last week, had been making increasingly hostile online comments and threats.

German leaders say they’d received and followed up on several tips, including via social media, that Taleb al Abdulmohsen was expressing radical views. CNN reports Germany also received warnings from officials in the suspect’s native country, Saudi Arabia.

Counterterrorism analyst Dr. Hans Jakob Schindler says when troubling online comments emerge, governments need more direct help from social media platforms…

SCHINDLER: Whatever how many resources German or other security forces have in Europe, they will never be able to police the entire internet. We need those companies to help the security forces [with] highlighting radicalization processes that they enable with their algorithms that lead to violence.

The suspect, a 50-year-old psychiatrist who’d lived in Germany since 2006, had expressed dissatisfaction with the country’s treatment of refugees. In May, he posted on X that “German terrorism will be brought to justice. It’s very likely that I will die this year in order to bring justice.”

Trump gives first major post-election speech » President-elect Trump is floating the idea of the U.S. taking back control of the Panama Canal.

Should that happen, Trump says…

TRUMP: “This complete rip-off of our country will immediately stop (cheering). It’s going to stop.”

Those comments came Sunday at Trump’s first major rally since winning back the presidency.

He says the U.S. is being charged excessive rates to use the passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Panama’s president rejected Trump’s comments as an affront to Panamanian sovereignty.

The U.S. and Panama jointly administered the canal from the late 1970s to 1999, when Panama took over control.

During his speech at a Turning Point USA event in Arizona, Trump also pledged to seal the U.S. borders, create a booming economy, and quickly settle wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Mangione to be arraigned in NYC Monday » The accused killer in this month’s fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson faces arraignment on state charges in New York today. That means the state will officially inform Luigi Mangione of the charges he faces, including first-degree murder as an act of terrorism.

He’s also facing federal charges. Those carry possible punishments of life in prison or the death penalty.

Investigators say a notebook found on Mangione contained threats against the health insurance industry and outlined plans to target a CEO. Former FBI Agent Peter Licata…

LICATA: We always talk about motive, opportunity, means. All three of those elements are addressed and captured in the criminal complaint as well as his notebook and they seem to match up.

Mangione remains in a federal detention facility. His trial on the state charges is expected to happen before his federal trial.

I'm Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: the Supreme Court considers a case, when legal deadlines fall on weekends or holidays. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 23rd day of December, 2024. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. We’re down to our final days in the Year End Giving Drive.

It’s been quite a year for us at WORLD.

AUDIO: The flooding is devastating.

At the end of September, we were chased out of our home base in Asheville, North Carolina, in tiny Biltmore Village, as the remnants of gulf hurricane Helene stalled out and overwhelmed a flood-prone river nearby, the Swannanoa.

The local TV station is WLOS:

WLOS: Waiting to see the damage in Biltmore Village. / Biltmore Village is underwater / so this should all still be treated as an active, natural disaster. / We've already planned. 
We have National Guard soldiers. We have swiftwater rescue teams. / At three this afternoon, the Swannanoa River crested in Biltmore more than five feet over the previous record. / And it didn't take a lot of wind to knock these trees down. / 
All roads in western North Carolina should be considered closed. / Now we want to emphasize this storm is far from over. Historic flooding, high winds, and more heavy rain / as Helene makes its way to the mountains. / We're gonna go live now to Gracie Matisse / 
there in Biltmore Village. / Look at how fast that water is rushing over there. / I mean, we just saw this water carry an entire propane tank. / 
Oh, wow, look at that. That is a dumpster, uh, that is just being carried by the water, so powerful, powerful water there. / We've been constantly having to move our car up to get to higher ground
.

Higher ground, indeed. Our friends at Evangelism Explosion, situated as they are on higher ground in Western North Carolina, offered to share space with us… office space, studio space, and several of our people are still using those facilities.

Thankfully, when disaster struck, we did have enough staff off-site that we didn’t miss a beat. We just kept publishing, we stayed on the air, we didn’t miss even a single deadline.

When we put out that S-O-S call for help the Monday after the flood, many listeners and readers and viewers of WORLD were kind to respond with such generosity that we had to ask you to stop after just a few days!

We had collected what we thought we would need to replace destroyed equipment and take care of emergencies, and we are so grateful for that.

REICHARD: Now more than two months later, here we are in the closing days of our Year End Giving Drive.

We have the same needs we always have in bringing you sound journalism grounded in facts and Biblical truth.

If you’re a regular giver and you gave in October, again, thank you, we’re grateful. But we are asking, if you can, still to participate in the Year End Giving Drive.

EICHER: That’s exactly it. October was asking simply to cover immediate emergency expenses due to the destruction of our offices and studios.

Our Year-End campaign is about the resources to continue to do the job. So if you can help, we do still need you.

Please visit wng.org/YearEndGift.

REICHARD: Well, tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. So, imagine you had an important legal deadline that fell on that day, or Christmas Day, or even on a weekend. You know the government’s closed. But would you assume the real deadline was the next business day?

ROBERTS: We'll hear argument first this morning in Case 23-929, Velazquez versus Garland.

This case is about exactly that. And given that the case is at the U.S. Supreme Court, it’s not such a straightforward set of questions.

EICHER: Hugo Monsalvo Velazquez came to the U.S. as a teen in 2005, from Mexico. When U.S. authorities began the process of deportation, they also granted him “voluntary departure”—meaning, “you can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way.”

Part of the hard way was a 60-day deadline on the easy way. Day 60 was a Saturday.

Here’s lawyer Gerard Cedrone:

CEDRONE: The 60-day time period in the voluntary departure statute works like any routine legal time period. When the last day falls on a weekend or holiday, the period continues to run until the next business day.

His point was that a long-standing legal principle should apply: if a deadline falls on a weekend, you get until the next business day.

But the government’s lawyer wasn’t having it. Here’s Assistant Solicitor General Anthony Yang:

YANG: Section 1229c's maximum 60-day period for voluntary departure is not extended when the last day falls on a holiday or weekend. The requirement to arrange for travel and to depart the United States involves primary conduct in the real world. Nothing prevents departure on weekends or holidays when many prefer to travel. And unlike contexts involving the timing of litigation-based or administrative acts before courts or agencies, no tradition by rule or otherwise potentially exists for extending statutory deadlines for primary conduct.

REICHARD: Justice Neil Gorsuch injected some levity into an otherwise dry debate in this exchange with Yang:

GORSUCH: But your regulation is clear. It says “all,” “any.” And you’ve had this regulation for a very long time, and normally, the government really likes its regulations. It used to come up here and say we have to defer to them. Now it comes up here and says we should give them great respect when they’re contemporaneous and long-standing, which check both those boxes here, right? So you’re running from your regulations. I mean, it’s sort of like garlic in front of a vampire. You don’t want to have anything to do with them.

Justice Samuel Alito pointed to practicalities:

ALITO: Why can't they say: You've got to get out of the country in 60 days? You can get out of the country just as easily on a Saturday or a Sunday as you can on a Monday.

EICHER: Still, most justices seemed sympathetic to Velazquez. He’s lived in the U.S. for 20 years, he runs an auto-detailing business, and has two kids who were born here. There’s no record of criminality.

REICHARD: Maybe we need to make the obvious point that he’s still fighting this deportation, and has been since he basically defied the order to leave back in 2011. He’s been fighting in court ever since. Lower courts have ruled in contradictory ways on this basic question of the deadline, so of course it wound up at the Supreme Court.

Okay, this next one I’ll just mention very briefly: Williams v Washington. This one asks about exhaustion. Not the Christmas-shopping kind of exhaustion, but rather the legal hoops you have to jump through before suing in court. Exhausting all those.

The case asks whether it’s fair to demand state processes be fully exhausted before heading to federal court … even when the state is maddeningly slow to process those claims.

EICHER: That was brief, not exhausting at all.

On to the next dispute, which may yet prove exhausting

Nvidia Corporation versus E. Ohman. The court dismissed the case after oral argument. And that was no surprise really, given how the justices kept making the same point over and over, like this one from Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

SOTOMAYOR: I'm not actually sure what rule we could articulate that would be clearer than our cases already say.

This case involved shareholders who claimed that the chip maker Nvidia misled them. They say the company concealed how much it relied on sales from crypto-mining, and not its core business of gamers.

And that affected the value of the stock. Nvidia is publicly traded.

The high court likes to resolve big legal questions, so its rulings apply down the line to all sorts of other cases. But sometimes cases are just too fact-specific and seem not to have broad applicability. That’s this case.

So, the justices punted the dispute back to the trial court to sort out.

REICHARD: OK, moving right along to case four, our final one today: E.M.D. Sales v Carrera. It’s a case about overtime pay and who gets it.

The question is around the standard of proof: Is it enough for bosses to show workers “probably” don’t qualify for overtime pay? Or do they have to put on “clear and convincing” evidence?

The company says it needs only tip the balance to 51% certainty: a preponderance of the evidence. Here’s its lawyer, Lisa Blatt:

BLATT: For over a century, this Court has held that the default standard in civil cases is preponderance of the evidence. That default rule should resolve this case. Nothing in the text suggests that Congress intended a clear and convincing evidence standard to apply to the 34 exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act….This court has reserved the clear and convincing standard to deprivations by the government of critical rights that don’t involve money damages.

EICHER: Here the workers were sales reps for a company that distributes groceries in the Washington, DC, area.

Management negotiates the really big sales with grocers, so the workers here mostly restocked shelves, took care of in-store displays, and stopped in on grocers on their routes.

They made occasional sales, but that wasn’t a major part of the job.

Outside sales jobs are considered exempt from overtime pay. Given their actual job duties, and the fact they often put in 60 hours per week, the workers sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act, arguing they really aren’t exempt from overtime pay.

REICHARD: Their lawyer argued that employers have to meet a tougher standard of proof, because fair wages are a big deal. Here’s lawyer Lauren Bateman:

BATEMAN: Here, application of the clear and convincing standard of proof is necessary to carry out the explicit public purpose of the Fair Labor Standards Act….The preponderance of the evidence standard falls short of that purpose because it allocates the risk of factual error equally between employers and workers. But the FLSA is not your typical civil statute where only individual monetary damages are at stake, and so, as far as the public is concerned, the interests of plaintiff and defendant are in equipoise. Instead, it's a statute that protects both the worker's right to a fair day's pay for a fair day's work but also the public's right to an economic system that doesn't depend on and inexorably lead to the impoverishment and immiseration of the American worker. …It's also appropriate because employers are likely to possess and control evidence relevant to these kinds of factual determinations. And employers can and sometimes do manipulate evidence in their favor, such as job descriptions or titles. Unchecked, these factors lead to disproportionate errors of fact finding in favor of employers. Thus, it's sensible to insist that where an employer seeks to prove that an employee is exempt from these protections, the employer must do so clearly and convincingly.

Justice Clarence Thomas had a pointed question:

THOMAS: Why should the FLSA be treated differently from discrimination cases? 

EICHER: Justice Alito took it further. Why suppose proof in overtime disputes is more important than proof in other disputes over money?

ALITO: Government provides lots of benefits that are critically -- monetary benefits that are critically important to some people. Would you have us say that none of those can rise to the level of importance that is present when what's involved is overtime payments under the FLSA?

BATEMAN: I --I think that necessarily this is a --this is a question left to the judiciary to ascertain in a case-by-case basis, but --but --

ALITO: Yeah. Well, how would we go about doing that? Say it's a determination of welfare benefits. Is that less important than this?

BATEMAN: Certainly not. But I think one operative question is whether those rights are waivable by the individual. And because they're not waivable in the FLSA context, that is an indicator that there's a broader remedial scheme at issue than just individual monetary damages.

Six federal circuits already use that “more likely than not” preponderance standard the employer wants.

But the Fourth Circuit where this case originates requires employers to meet that higher standard of proof, clear and convincing. Something like 75% level of certainty.

REICHARD: This case has bounced around in the courts for 7 years. And it matters way beyond just the facts here. However the court decides about exempting employees in sales positions, it’ll affect all other exemptions within the Fair Labor Standards Act as well. That affects about 10 million businesses in the country … employing more than 140 million people.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David.

JOHN STONESTREET: Well, good morning, Nick. Good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, I don’t think we’ve ever seen an orderliness to these end-of-year, end-of-session scrambles in Congress, David. All the brinkmanship around approving government spending and averting a government shutdown. That said, this seemed especially chaotic this year—with a president elect waiting not in the wings, really, but a lot more front and center—and then a high-profile adviser who happens to be the richest man in the world. Have a quick listen to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson after Congress okayed a spending extension that kicks the can down the road as far as March … not clear how much money it is, but it’s a lot.

JOHNSON: I was in constant contact with President Trump throughout this process, spoke with him most recently about 45 minutes ago. He knew exactly what we were doing and why, and this is a good outcome for the country. I think he certainly was happy about this outcome as well. Elon Musk and I talked within about an hour ago, and we talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job. And I said, hey, you want to be Speaker of the House? I don't know. He said, this may be the hardest job in the world. I think it is.

Even-keeled guy, the speaker, but what do you think: trouble in paradise?

BAHNSEN: Well, I think that you're right. I don't think people should be surprised. There was probably a little honeymoon phase after the election results that was never likely to be sustained. Now that's not to say that things are completely and totally broken and that the entire agenda of Trump, 2.0 administration has been derailed.

It is, though, from the vantage point of markets, a clear indicator that much of the stuff on the agenda, including things we've talked about on this very program, are highly unlikely to happen with the simplicity and ease that many had hoped for. Getting this budget impasse situation handled this week is a reasonably small task compared to some of the things that are ahead. If they've had this kind of problem with a reasonably small task, then I think it should be indicative that there's going to be more issues ahead.

Now, some of the tension between certain people, whether it's Speaker Johnson, Elon Musk, other key congressmen, congresswomen, of course, the president himself, the vice president—let's not forget that bills don't become law without the Senate as well, and senators are much more immune to the political pressures of the White House than congressmen are, just by nature of a six-year term versus a two-year term. So there's going to be some rocky roads ahead for a lot of this stuff.

That's not to say that all of it won't come together. It's just not going to be as easy as people hoped.

EICHER: David, you wrote about this in Dividend Cafe, addressing the long losing streak in the markets, making the point that an 11-hundred point drop, mathematically, isn’t as much as it seems, as a percentage. But still a losing streak is a losing streak.

BAHNSEN: Well, I do actually think that this week's Dividend Cafe is a pretty good one for WORLD listeners to check out, because both of those points are made. When you're talking about, you know, an 11-day-in-a-row down streak in the Dow that's 50 years old, the record goes back 50 years, that is something.

You know, you had a bit of a comeback in the market on Friday, but nevertheless, you're still looking at a couple thousand points down. You're still looking at being higher than you were before the election.

So both sides of this lesson need to be understood for market actors, for investors, for those looking to the market, as if it were some kind of indication about what's happening in the economy. Things that go up very quickly can go down very quickly.

Do people believe that the fundamentals and the real life situation changed that quickly, up and down? Or do they believe it more reflects—I use the word stupidity, but just the silliness—the emotions, too much euphoria behind an election result that many people liked? Too much panic behind other setbacks indicates a misunderstanding of the way where we are in the cycle. Nick, things are very expensive in markets, and so they don't require a good reason to go up or go down.

And those things will happen quickly at times, as we've seen here in the last couple weeks.

EICHER: Let’s talk about shiny objects, David, that seem to mesmerize the markets at times. A few years ago, all the rage was anything that helped remote work, and I remember how you said so many of these things were way overvalued. For example, Peloton … what you called exercise bike with an iPad built in … that attracted billions in investment. Now the new shiny object is everything A-I, artificial intelligence. Is this the same phenomenon?

BAHNSEN: Well, look it is not quite like it was in 2022. A lot of the shiny object critique I had was around things that were inexplicably stupid, the $50 billion valuation on an exercise bike with an iPad that quickly became a $1 billion valuation. It was hyper predictable. A lot of these so-called SPACs, single purpose acquisition companies that go public easy, they were not viable companies worthy of their valuation.

The work-from-home moment, it's—

You know, I get a lot of things wrong even as a financial professional, but my insistence was that we were not changing, in some cases tens of years, in some cases, thousands of years of human behavior because of the pandemic and the way that people were looking at companies like Zoom and DoorDash and, obviously, Peloton, fit in there too. You know, the world was going to reopen, and market prices should reflect that. Some temporary changes were going to be just that temporary. So that stuff got corrected in 2022 and unfortunately, it did it to people who didn't know better.

But now I think what you're dealing with is a little different in that the biggest shiny object is AI.

This is the issue that is all at once going to be a big deal and yet going to inflict a lot of damage on people along the way in markets. It can't become a big deal without a graveyard of companies along the way that fail—without miscalculation as to what the big deal actually looks like, what the real use will end up being.

You know the way in which some of these big technological advancements of the last 25 years have played out. I can't think of a single one going back to the web browser, so I guess I'm aging myself. But really, that's 30 years old now when Netscape went public, and people believed AOL would be the dominant email user and Netscape would be the dominant web browser. Well, guess what? Email is big and the web browser is big, and it's not Netscape or AOL.

So that's just, to me, the story of technology. I think people are wildly overconfident that this thing is going to take place without some pain along the way.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. David’s Dividend Café is available to you for free at dividendcafe.com. David, thank you, hope you and the family have a Merry Christmas … and we’ll talk again once more before the end of the year for a wrap-up of 2024.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick. Merry Christmas.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, December 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. On this day during World War I, the evening peace began to break out. And another story of the transcendent power of Jesus Christ on a Christmas eve during World War II. Here’s WORLD’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: On Christmas Eve in 1914, a battlefield falls silent. Allied soldiers hunker down for the night. Across no man’s land, Germans do the same, trying to keep warm. The fighting had stopped hours before. German officer Walther Stennes remembers the day. Audio from Imperial War Museums.

WALTHER STENNES: Of course it was unusual that the opposite side also ceased fire. Then my officer controlling the sentries came in and said ‘Do you expect a surprise attack? Because it’s very unusual, the situation.’ I said, ‘No I don’t think so.’

Pauses in the fighting happen occasionally during the first five months of World War I. Enemies silence their weapons and let each other recover and bury the dead. Sometimes the sides even exchange souvenirs. Fraternization and random truces take place all along the Eastern Front. But they are highly localized and end as quickly as they start, and soldiers fight each other again as if nothing happened.

At the end of 1914, the Allied and Axis powers are at a stalemate on the Western Front in Belgium. Stuck in muddy trenches, hungry and cold, both sides deafened from bomb explosions and fierce gunfire.

But as night falls on December 24th the Allied soldiers hear a very different sound. Audio from Sainsbury’s.

COMMERCIAL: GERMAN TROOPS SINGING

The British join in:

COMMERCIAL: ENGLISH SOLDIERS JOIN IN

Both sides sing Christmas carols together. British private Marmaduke Walkinton, stationed close to the German trenches, yells some jokes across the divide. And the Germans yell back. Then one German soldier says:

MARMADUKE WALKINTON: ‘Tomorrow, you no shoot, we no shoot.’ And the morning came and we didn’t shoot and they didn’t shoot. So then we began to pop our heads out of the side and jump down quickly in case they shot but they didn’t shoot.

Audio there once again from Imperial War Museums. Further down the Front, Germans extend the same offer. The officers refuse, thinking that the request is a trap and the troops will be massacred.

But on Christmas Day, they reconsider and give their men the go-ahead. Allied soldiers walk slowly into no man’s land, where Axis soldiers are waiting. They exchange tins of food, cigarettes, and season’s greetings. Teams form to play soccer. Others join in prayer over the dead. Audio from an interview with soldier J. Reid.

J REID: We were swapping tins of bully for their tins of meat and the padre was out having a talk with them, they were burying any dead that was there and we were burying any dead – this carried on for about a couple of days.

When high command hears of the truce, they order the men back to the trenches. Gone are the carols. No more “peace on earth, good will toward men.” Machine guns open fire once again.

The event becomes something of a legend in military history. Official reports say as many as 100,000 men put down their weapons to celebrate Christmas together that day… but some skeptics wonder whether it really happened on such a large scale.

The next year, officials on both sides preemptively forbid any kind of Christmas ceasefires. Soldiers are told they will be charged with treason if they try to communicate with the enemy. But despite the order, some soldiers still extend peace on Christmas.

Next a lesser known Christmas truce, it’s 30 years later as World War II rages on—and unity is a thing of the past. The German army invades a thin line of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. At one point, three allied soldiers lose sight of their battalion and they wander for several days—one of them with a bullet wound. On Christmas Eve, they stumble upon a house in the forest.

A German woman answers the door. Her son, Fritz Vincken, remembers it clearly. He later writes about it in his short story: Truce in the Forest. Voice actor Jon Gauger.

JON GAUGER: Outside, like phantoms against the snow-clad trees, stood two steel-helmeted men. One of them spoke to Mother in a language we did not understand, pointing to a third man lying in the snow. She realized before I did that these were American soldiers. Enemies!

She lets them in. The Vinckens start preparing roasted chicken with potatoes … then there’s another knock at the door. Four German soldiers have also lost their way, and need a place to stay. Fritz’s mother allows them to come inside: on one condition. She says, “This is Christmas Eve, and there will be no shooting here.”

The soldiers agree, and throw their guns on a nearby woodpile and sit with the Americans. As Fritz’s mother sets the food on the table, she says a prayer, with tears in her eyes.

JON GAUGER: As I looked around the table, I saw tears, too, in the eyes of the battle-weary soldiers, boys again, some from America, some from Germany, all far from home.

The next morning, Christmas Day, a German soldier takes out a map and shows the Americans how to get back to their battalion on a map. They shake hands,and go their separate ways.

According to the story, Fritz walks back into the house after saying his farewells. And he notices his mother with the family Bible on her lap.

JON GAUGER: I glanced over her shoulder. The book was open to the Christmas story, the Birth in the Manger and how the Wise Men came from afar bearing their gifts. Her finger was tracing the last line from Matthew 2:21, “…they departed into their own country another way.”

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Before we go today, a special Monday commentary. This week will be full of last minute preparations as families host celebrations at home and church. WORLD Opinions contributor Candice Watters encourages parents to keep our eyes and hearts open for ways to involve your children.

CANDICE WATTERS: It was 30 minutes til our small group would descend on our just cleaned and decorated family room for a Christmas party. With only the punch to make; table to set; and brownies to bake, cool and cut, I was feeling fairly optimistic about being able to get the final details in place before the first ring of the doorbell. Then those infamous words filled my ears: “Mommy…can I help?”

Not one, not two, but all four of our kids, ranging in ages 5 to 13, wanted to make the punch. I know how this ends. You probably do too. I’ve been heard in moments of exasperation to announce loudly in the midst of a crazy kitchen, “It’s not helping if you make my work harder! Help is supposed to make things easier for me!”

Still, I was inclined to let them. How much damage could they do pouring bottles of cranberry juice, Sprite, and pineapple juice into the oversized golden bowl? But our 11-year-old daughter wasn’t so sure. She protested: “Mom! He might make a mess!”, staring at her younger brother. I replied: “That's true,” “And so did you! But I let you do it–you made messes–and that’s why you’re a help to me now.”

My Mom used to ask my Dad to take me and my younger siblings with him on a last minute errand to the grocery store when we were expecting company. “I can stay and help!” I’d insist. But she knew what would help her most–being alone to focus on the work without distraction or interruption. All these years later, I understand why she said no. It is easier to be left alone with a quiet house to finish the meatballs and hummus, light the candles, and pour the punch. We both had to learn what all moms have to: it’s worth the mess and inconvenience of letting kids help because that’s how they learn.

Even today I repress the occasional urge to ban our kids from the kitchen in the countdown to company arriving. But now that some of them are the company I’m preparing for, I’m glad for all the times I said yes.

What about you? Do you do it yourself, or let your kids help? That’s a daily dilemma for busy moms whose kids long to jump in with unskilled hands and clumsy feet. It's rarely, if ever, efficient to say yes. It’s so much easier to just do it yourself … the right way. Or at least the way you prefer it. But if you always choose what’s most efficient, you may miss out on vital windows of instruction. Kids need to learn. And we need to teach them.

Making punch may not rise to the level of “training our children in the instruction of the Lord” as Ephesians 6 requires, but how we respond to their offers of help, and the messes they make in their eagerness to jump in, does. Every moment in the kitchen is teachable because our children are always watching. What do they see? A mom who’s patient and loving when the cranberry juice splashes over the side of the bowl? A Dad who’s calm when they drop the tray of cookies? Parenting is nothing if not sanctifying.

After our kids finished making the punch, I sent them to the family room to watch for our company while I cleaned up the inevitable spills made, ironically, by the 11-year-old. It was then that I heard the Lord whisper to me, “I’m letting you help me.”

The thought struck me hard. “With these children, I’m letting you help. I could have made new people without you. I could have formed them and raised them to adulthood some other way. But I chose to use you to help me with these precious children.” Tears filled my eyes. I’ve made a lot of messes learning how to raise our kids, with my own unskilled hands and clumsy feet. All along God has been teaching me as I teach them. And the more I’ve leaned into the work of it–the messes, the frustrations, the setbacks, and the joys–the more He’s changed me. This is by His design.

When your kids ask you to let them help, err on the side of saying yes. When you do, you’ll be growing to be more like your Father…oh, and you might want to keep some extra paper towels nearby.

I’m Candice Watters.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: California has declared a state of emergency due to bird-flu. Is it the right response?

And, we’ll meet a family that won’t be celebrating Christmas.

That and more tomorrow.

Reminder, we’re down to about a week left in our Year-End-Giving Drive. Every gift makes a difference. wng.org/YearEndGift.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Our thanks to WORLD’s Emma Perley who wrote today’s History Book segment.

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The Bible says: “For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations. As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head.” —Obadiah 1:15

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