Key Takeaways:
- During their historic first crewed mission orbiting the Moon, the Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders performed a Christmas Eve broadcast, reciting the initial ten verses of the biblical book of Genesis.
- This particular transmission achieved the distinction of being the most-viewed television program up to that point, occurring during a period of significant social unrest in the United States.
- The crew contemplated various options for their Christmas Eve message, including adapting lyrics from traditional holiday songs, which were ultimately deemed unsuitable.
- The decision to use the Genesis passage stemmed from a suggestion made by the wife of a Washington, D.C. newspaper friend, who was consulted by a NASA public relations contact seeking appropriate verbiage for the broadcast.
In their historic first crewed mission to the Moon, Apollo 8 crew Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders made a Christmas Eve broadcast, reading the first 10 verses of the biblical book of Genesis. It was the most-viewed TV program of all time (to that date). In his 2018 interview with Astronomy Contributing Editor Richard Talcott commemorating the 50th anniversary of their journey, Lovell explained how the broadcast came to be:
“This all started when we started training [and] found out we were going to be orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve. You know, what a coincidence. First flight to the Moon on a year that, looking back on it now, was a very poor year in the United States — the war was going on, the riots, and the assassinations. And we said, ‘Well, can we change the words to “The Night Before Christmas”?’ That didn’t sound good at all. And ‘Jingle Bells’ was even worse. And finally, I think it was Frank [who knew a PR guy in NASA], and Frank asked him what we could say. And he didn’t quite know . . . but he had a newspaper friend . . . in Washington, D.C. He called and said, “Look it, these fellows want to say something, and we want them to say something, too, when they’re around the Moon on Christmas Eve, but we don’t know what to say. You’re a newspaperman, you’re used to writing all kinds of things like this, could you come up with some good verbiage?”So one night he [started to think about what we could say], and nothing came out. Until his wife walked down the stairs and asked him, “Well, what are you doing? You’re up late.” And he told her the story. And she said, “Well, that’s simple — just have them read the first 10 verses of Genesis from the Old Testament. That tells everything.” And so that’s how it came to pass.”
