Henry W. Longfellow, of The Song of Hiawatha fame, wrote Christmas Bells in 1863. The poem echoed the song of the angels on the very first Christmas: “Peace on Earth!” But it also reflected on the fact that the deadliest military conflict in American history, the Civil War, was at its peak. Longfellow’s poem was not the first or last work of art to portray this heartbreaking contrast between Christmas and war.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, an odd six-episode OVA member of the big Gundam family, belongs to that tradition. In 2023, this reality may be more present in our minds. Christmas at war: bombs and shootings juxtaposed with hymns and decorations. The warm anticipation of the presence of family and friends and the looming threat that they will be counted among the fallen. Those who could be friends or lovers fighting one another. How do we deal with such dissonance?

Both War in the Pocket and Christmas Bells approach this issue by starting with images of light and innocence, reinforced by the familiar Christmas imagery, and gradually letting darker concepts and themes emerge. As such, as we will see, they highlight some often overlooked themes of violence and death present in the Christmas story, as told in the Gospel.

I will let Longfellow’s powerful words speak for themselves. These are the first six stanzas of his poem:

I heard the bells on Christmas day/ Their old familiar carols play, / And wild and sweet the words repeat / Of peace of earth, good-will to men. // I thought how, as the day had come, / The belfries of all Christendom / Had rolled along th’ unbroken song / Of peace on earth, good-will to men.

Till ringing, singing on its way, / The world revolved from night to day, / A voice, a chime, / A chant sublime / Of peace on earth, good-will to men! // Then from each black, accursed mouth / The cannon thundered in the South, / And with the sound the carols drowned / Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent / The hearth-stones of a continent, / And made forlorn / The households born / Of peace on earth, good-will to men! // And in despair I bowed my head: / “There is no peace on earth,” I said, / “For hate is strong, and mocks the song/ Of peace on earth, good-will to men.”

As War in the Pocket begins, we likewise see Christmas lights and decorations through the eyes of Al, a kid whose father, an interstellar pilot, might not be home for Christmas. But Al is also fascinated by war and goes around the space colony of Side 6 storing all sorts of war-related memorabilia in his back pocket. This hobby leads him to find Bernie, the sole survivor of an enemy mecha squad, now in hiding.

This being a spin-off, the intergalactic conflict feels complex and remote, which is actually perfect for a scenario that owes a lot to the nebulous Cold War. The supposedly neutral colony hides a military base for the Earth Federation, and the young Bernie is courting danger. Because, mild spoilers for the first episodes, he hopes to sabotage their new Gundam model to serve Zeon.

But Al is a kid looking for a hero, and Bernie is innocent and noble in many ways, and their relationship soon becomes brotherly. Thus, Bernie meets the teenage prodigy Christina McKenzie, Al’s neighbor and former babysitter, and, tale as old as time, Bernie and Chris start to like each other. But… war is war. So cannons will thunder, and carols will be drowned.

Or will they? After the darkness, Longfellow’s poem has a seventh stanza:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep! The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Christmas was the first step towards the new Earth, one where justice would finally be served. Sometimes, God also provides justice here and now, as a flash-forward from that future, and a sign of hope.

Despite the hardships War in the Pocket puts us through, I contend that it gives us a powerful sign of hope, too. We see a young man hoping to help his country, the world, and even perfect strangers, becoming a father figure of sorts, even as he feels his deficiencies. We see a young woman fighting to remain herself while struggling with a hard, unique mission, which makes her the salvation of her people.

And, most of all, we see a boy who embraces them both, who sees through violence and fear, who explicitly prays to God for the salvation of his world, for peace. And as I pointed out above, the first Christmas was also marked by the shadow of violence and war, and was perhaps more like the story War in the Pocket tells us than we realize. Let us count the ways.

Bernie is a young man with a mission, hiding in enemy territory, and constantly facing the risk of discovery and execution. The life of St. Joseph was… very much like that! After all, he belonged to the persecuted House of David, the former royal family, mostly annihilated before the Exile to Babylon. The line of Jeconiah, though, survived. Even more, Joseph knew himself to be the heir of the royal bloodline.

According to the early Church historian Eusebius, the genealogies of the House of David were discreetly kept in the Temple, and afterward, among the members of the House themselves, until the Gospel of Matthew revealed to the world who was who. It is not hard to see why. Israel was under occupation, and being discovered meant being a threat to the established authority, and hence, certain death.

Herod the Idumean was a deadly, paranoid tyrant, who would exterminate any threat to his throne. He went so far as to execute his wife, Mariamne, and his sons, Alexander, Aristobulos, and Antipater, for (supposedly) plotting against him. The life of Joseph, like the life of his ancestors mentioned in the genealogy who lived during the Greek and Roman occupations, was one of secrecy and hiding.

When addressing St. Joseph as the “son of David”, the angel of the Lord gave him the mission to be the adoptive father of Jesus, and so when he journeyed to Bethlehem with his wife and named his adoptive son in the Temple, he was courting execution and a death he only escaped because he was warned by the angel in a dream. Thus, St. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus avoided their grisly fate by running away in the middle of the night.

The newborns and toddlers of Bethlehem were not so lucky and became prey to the paranoia of the king, prompted by the visit of the Wise Men from the East. St. Joseph and his family were forced to travel as refugees into exile, and even when the angel told him it was time to go back, we see him having to choose the location where the ruler was less likely to find and kill him and his adopted son: Nazareth, in the remote region of Galilee.

A king in hiding, working as a humble artisan, obeying the mission handed down by angels, and taking care of a son unlike any other son. Such was the man who educated Our Lord. After the Resurrection, Eusebius tells us (quoting the earlier historian Hegesipus of Jerusalem) that the relatives of Joseph (and Jesus) would be likewise persecuted by Emperor Domitian, who also feared the House of David. (I owe this new perspective on St. Joseph to Dr. Brant Pitre’s eye-opening presentation, accessible here.)

The mission St. Mary received was even harsher. In the show, Christina McKenzie, a strong-minded, kind-hearted young woman, must pilot the ultimate weapon. She flies the knight-robot we are familiar with in the Gundam saga, a symbol of nobility and cosmic power. St. Mary, in turn, was called to be what the Book of Revelation, 11-12, depicts as the new Ark of Covenant, the vessel of God’s presence.

The Ark is a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head is a crown of stars, per the cosmic scale of God’s Redemption, as great or greater than the work of Creation. At the same time, she is suffering the pangs and anguish of childbirth, and even more so, because before her, there stands “the great dragon … that ancient serpent” (Rev 12:9), wishing to devour the Child.

We know who this serpent is, for the Book of Genesis depicts Satan, the Devil, as a serpent. The Book of Revelation describes the Woman fleeing into the desert, aided by eagle wings, and protecting the newborn King. But in time, the mission would come to fulfillment: it would be before the very eyes of His mother that Jesus of Nazareth would suffer a long, grisly death at the hands of Satan and his instruments.

A cosmic mission and very human sufferings: St. Mary was well aware of this side of her mission. Simeon the prophet told her when the Child was just eight days old that when His mission was fulfilled, a sword would pierce her soul (Luke 2:26-28). And even before that, the immediate consequence of the Annunciation was for her to be pregnant but not by her husband, a crime punishable by stoning unto death.

St. Mary, though, had heard the angel say: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God… For with God nothing will be impossible” (cf. Luke 1: 31-37). And thus, she fought all these battles by renewing the unconditional “yes” she had expressed then and there: “Let it be to me according to your word.”

Despite her humility, Christina’s powerful personality shines through in War in the Pocket. When it comes to the first Christmas, millions of Christians all through the ages have been inspired by the battle of Mary, this humble daughter of God against the darkness, and by her mission of accepting and accompanying Christ, as a mother, as a widow, and as a disciple. This mission becomes universal in the Cross, where Our Lord, referring to His disciple, says to her: “Mother, here is your son.”

But the main protagonist of War in the Pocket is not Bernie or Christina: it is Al, the kid with war in his pocket. His journey leads to a moment of prayer, surrounded by Christmas imagery, which brings to my mind Longfellow’s seventh stanza. I won’t reveal here the circumstances of Al’s prayer (watch the show! It’s amazing!), but it encompasses the whole colony with its warmth, purity, and heroic love. The boy who loves war is the one who pays, in this powerful way, for peace.

This is, to my mind, the show’s great moment of triumph and the hope that War in the Pocket gives us. Despite the darkness that we have experienced, despite the darkness we will experience still, Alfred, Bernie, and Christina shine each with their distinct light and make this Gundam spin-off a fitting Christmas story. The fight that matters the most is the fight inside their hearts. And with the help of God, Love will triumph.

The angelic host did not only proclaim the arrival of peace on Earth. They said: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” Jesus of Nazareth brought with Him a different sort of hope, a different sort of peace, in the first Christmas. He brought us the favor of God out of heroic, salvific, all-encompassing love, and continues to do so today.

Christ, the second person of the Trinity, decided to become a child, setting the first Christmas in motion. His life, from the first moment, was a constant prayer to the Father. One full of purity, of faith, of undying love, from the cradle to the Cross, and beyond. A prayer that might draw us in, so that the true Light of all Lights will always shine in our hearts, overcoming even death itself.

Coincidentally, this little gem, this self-contained Gundam spin-off that deals with themes of Christmas and war, was launched on March 25th, 1989, nine months before Christmas, a day on which the feast of the Annunciation at least for thirteen centuries. 1989 was a year of tension and uncertainty, as the cracks in the Soviet Union started to show and the threat of nuclear war loomed on the horizon.

In the end, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Union itself dissolved in 1991. But there was no new era of peace: armed conflicts just changed. The kind of peace that renders war a nightmare from ages past remains a dream in our world. Even so, we fight with hope, for the Newborn King is here. And, God willing, He will bring us into his undying prayer, triumph over the darkness, and open to us the new world.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Bing Crosby has a beautiful song version of “Christmas Bells” that can be listened to here.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket can be acquired on Amazon, eBay, or (if you live in Japan), streamed at Google Play.