During my very first semester of college, I had to write a paper on culture and this is what came out. I always bend the rules when it comes to papers and I always find a way to make it my own. This particular paper I decided to completely rewrite and change the topic of 8 hours before it was due. This paper means the world to me and I will always cherish it greatly. I now ask you to read this paper and challenge my arguments with your own counterarguments. Thank you all.
John Lennon was an English musician, singer, and songwriter. He rose to fame as ¼ of The Beatles, arguably one of the greatest rock bands of all time. After many years of success with The Beatles, Lennon started on the journey of his solo career where he produced critically acclaimed albums “Imagine” and “John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band” and legendary anti-war singles such as “Imagine”, “Give Peace A Chance” and “Happy Xmas (War is Over)”. As early as 1966, Lennon has been known to stand up against the war efforts and to question the absence of peace in the world. One of the many ways he campaigned the war was my writing music. John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” helped fuel the Anti-war movement during the Vietnam War.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono were activists throughout the Vietnam War. They firmly believed in peace and that if we want peace we could have it. Although “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” is a holiday favorite, the core message of the song is to appeal to the anti-war movement. Lennon was clever to use the theme of a Christmas song as a cover for the underlying meaning. While replacing ‘Christmas with Xmas removes the Christianity association, replacing ‘Merry’ with the word ‘Happy’ removed any association that you would have with Christ and the virgin Mary. Although Lennon created a message that “was inspired by certain Christian ideas”, he removed Christ from the world Christmas in the tile of his song(Rodger 534). Lennon was showing the “declining relevance of established religion in society ”(Rodger 534). Interestingly enough, Lennon’s single is the only song title that uses Xmas to replace the word Christmas. It is believed that this replacement is to disassociate the song with Christianity and make it equal for everyone no matter what religion or race. Lennon and Ono’s mission was to continue on with their anti-war activism.
John Lennon was not a newcomer to this particular war versus antiwar era. In fact, John Lennon and his wife, then girlfriend, Yoko Ono began participating in protests against the Vietnam War during the last two years of The Beatles career. Lennon and Ono were married in late March of 1969 in Gibraltar. After the wedding they checked into Amsterdam Hilton Hotel and spent their honeymoon campaigning a Bed-In for peace. During the entire week of protest they spent ten hours a day in interviews. After being asked what the exact intent of the bed-in, Lennon explained:
We’re sending out a message, mainly to youth, or to anybody interested in protesting against any form of violence. . . . We did the bed-in in Amsterdam . . . just to give people the idea that there are many ways of protest. . . . Protest for peace in any way, but peacefully, ‘cause we think that peace is only got by peaceful methods, and that to fight the establishment with their own weapons is no good because they always win, and they’ve been winning for thousands of years. They know how to play the game of violence. But they don’t know how to handle humor, and peaceful humor- and that’s our message really. (Wiener 7)
Lennon and Ono had planned another Bed-In to be held in the United States but were denied entry. They decided to move peaceful protest to Montreal and that is where they wrote and recorded “Give Peace A Chance”.
The pair was so successful in leading these peaceful rebellions; they even created their own theory on how the world could obtain the peace that they aimed for. “Bagism” was a term used to describe Love and Peace, so by living in a bag, a person could not be judges by others on the basis of skin color, gender, hair length, attire, age, or any other such characteristics.
It is no secret that flower children and the government don’t get along, John Lennon seems to be one of the founding fathers of this concept. President Nixon would get particularly upset with the peace protestors, Nixon “accumulates a significant FBI file [on Lennon] in early 1970’s as part of [his] attempts to have him [Lennon] deported and silenced about the war.” (Côte 746) All of this file consisted of evidence that “John Lennon took a position against the war in Vietnam with songs such as “Give Peace A Chance” and “Happy Xmas (War is Over)”. . . and as early as 1966 had expressed his opposition to the war at various events.” (Côte 746) Nixon believed that Lennon’s anti-war activity would cost him his reelection.
In 1969, Lennon and Ono put up billboard advertisements in major cities around the world that said, “War is over! If you want it.” Two years later this slogan became the basis for this song when Lennon decided to make a Christmas record with an anti-war message. The background lyrics throughout the song are “War is over, if you want it. War is over, now.” These words make a strong, and outstanding appearance and the last two lines in the song. When interviewing for an article covered by a journalist named David Sheff, Lennon gives a brief background on the song, “[W]e’re just as responsible as the man who pushes the button. As long as people imagine that somebody’s doing it to them and that they have no control, then they have no control.” (Sheff) Lennon wants the world to realize that no matter what we the people should not have to fight in war(s) to get our point made, or to get what we want. In 1967 when Jimi Hendrix was asked about his opinion on the war, he paraphrased William Gladstone’s, “We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.” (Goodman 639) The problem now is a multistep task for the world to tackle together, first we must demolish the love of power so that it cannot return, we must also define the power of love that will change the world.
As many generations before now have questioned the world’s inability to grasp the concept of peace, and as many generations to come will question the same concept, the world will continue to fight on. It is almost as if everyone has forgotten what we started fighting for in the first place. War’s on oppression seem to be a hobby here on planet earth. Why do we put fellow mankind through this? We are all equal, we are all born, we face struggles and have triumphs, we have something to be passionate for and all have someone to live for. We have to find what passion fuels our fires, that is the first step to extinguishing the fires of war. John Lennon was an activist that didn’t do the things that he did for attention or publicity; he did these things because he saw a rapid decline in the human race and realized that if something doesn’t change, the world will continue to fight until we are all wiped out. And to be quite honest, that seems like a really terrible was to go. It seems that the idea of unity has become so foreign that it is too late to return to the times of unity. Contrary to the way that it seems, it is never too late to gain peace in this world. That would be giving up when we should charge ahead.