Christmas of 1968 is remembered for what happened as part of the mission of Apollo 8. This was a full six months before man landed on the moon in July of 1969 and their mission was to orbit the moon nine times — an event that transpired on Christmas Eve.
Each time they circled the moon they were out of touch with earth for 45 minutes.
This was an age when many had just color television as their cutting edge technology. The fact that man was in space and progressing towards a moon landing and that much of that could be seen on their television was big news. The astronauts were told that millions of Americans would be watching on their television and their job was to come up with something appropriate to say to that global audience, estimated later by some at half a billion people worldwide, the largest television audience in history up to that time.
Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders deliberated over what to say.
“We were told that on Christmas Eve we would have the largest audience that had ever listened to a human voice,” Borman said in a statement, remembering the event. “And the only instructions that we got from NASA was to do something appropriate.”
We don’t know if it played a part in their decision but an unexpected event transpired during those orbits that produced one of the most iconic images from space ever — the Earthrise photo. On their fourth orbit it happened — Anders first spotted it, the Earth, peeking over the horizon.
“Oh my God! Look at that picture over there!” exclaimed Anders. “There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!”
“In lunar orbit, it occurred to me that, here we are, all the way up there at the moon, and we’re studying this thing, and it’s really the Earth as seen from the moon that’s the most interesting aspect of this flight,” Anders told author Andrew Chaikin for the 2009 book “Voices from the Moon”
The astronauts decided to celebrate the holiday by reading from the book of Genesis. Lovell explained the team’s reasoning.
“The first 10 verses of Genesis is the foundation of many of the world’s religions, not just the Christian religion,” Lovell said. “There are more people in other religions than the Christian religion around the world, and so this would be appropriate to that, and so that’s how it came to pass.”
The crewmembers ended the message by wishing everyone “on the good Earth” a Merry Christmas.
After the Christmas Eve orbits, it was time for the team to return to Earth. Mission control anxiously waited to hear if the Apollo 8 spacecraft’s engine burn had successfully propelled it outside the moon’s gravitational pull so the crew could get home. Confirmation came when Lovell radioed in, “Roger, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”
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