Christmas in Tehran: Bringing the Holidays to Hostages
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
In 1979, as Christmas approached, the United States Embassy in Tehran held more than fifty American hostages, who had been seized when revolutionaries stormed the embassy. No one from the U.S. had been able to have contact with them. The Reverend M. William Howard, Jr., was the president of the National Council of Churches at the time, and when he received a telegram from the Revolutionary Council, inviting him to perform Christmas services for the hostages, he jumped at the opportunity. In America, “we had a public that was quite riled up,” Reverend Howard reminds his son, The New Yorker Radio Hour’s Adam Howard. “Who knows what might have resulted if this issue were not somehow addressed? . . .Might there be an American invasion, an attempt to rescue the hostages in a militaristic way?” Reverend Howard was aware that the gesture had some propaganda value to the Iranian militants, but he saw a chance to lower the tension. Accompanied by another Protestant minister and a Catholic bishop, Howard entered front-page headlines, travelling to Tehran and into the embassy. He gave the captives updates on the N.F.L. playoffs, and they prayed. It was a surreal experience to say the least. “It was in the Iranian hostage crisis that I understood how alone we are, and how powerless we are when other people take control,” Reverend Howard says. “And really it’s in that setting that one can develop faith.”
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| 1:12.5 | This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. |
| 1:20.0 | Today, we've got an unusual sort of holiday story to share with you. It starts back in |
| 1:26.9 | 1979. |
| 1:30.0 | On the 22nd of December, which was a Saturday, your mother and I had been out grocery shopping, |
| 1:39.8 | so when we returned, we found the telegram. I read the telegram aloud to her, |
| 1:46.5 | and it said something like the Revolutionary Council of Iran |
| 1:53.0 | is pleased to invite you to conduct Christmas services |
| 1:58.3 | with the Americans in the U.S. Embassy. |
| 2:04.5 | That's the Reverend M. William Howard Jr. |
| 2:07.9 | He received that telegram as the Iran hostage crisis was unfolding. |
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