The year 1968 was not all roses for America. We found ourselves in a seemingly endless stalemate in Vietnam, where the death toll approached 40,000 U.S. troops. Growing opposition to the war caused the incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, to decline to run for re-election. Assassins’ bullets cut down civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Riots tore through Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other great American cities. The economy was plagued by rising inflation. The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia.

But on Christmas Eve, from a most unexpected place, America and the free world received a bit of good cheer. It came in the form of a broadcast to the largest global television audience to date.

The story starts with President John F. Kennedy’s speech to a special joint session of Congress several years before, in May 1961, in which he announced that it was “time for a great new American Enterprise.” This enterprise would be to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade was out. JFK did not mince words about the purpose of this costly and risky venture: it was to help “win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny.”

Barely a month before the Soviet Union had sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. Four years earlier they had launched the first satellite, Sputnik. The Soviets boasted publicly that they would “bury” the United States economically and technologically. The American-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba had just failed disastrously. The president wanted to revive America’s confidence in itself and demonstrate to “the minds of men everywhere” that free men and free countries were the hope for the future of the world.

Kennedy’s ambition might have seemed a little crazy to the experts. The scientists and engineers at NASA had no firm idea how to land a man on the moon, and even if they did, the technology simply did not then exist. The rockets we did have often blew up in spectacular and embarrassing fashion. Those who knew about such things could not be sure if an astronaut could function, or even survive, for that long outside the atmosphere. For all the experts knew, the moon’s surface wasn’t even solid. Besides, the space race would cost a boatload of money; and poverty, education, and other earthly problems seemed to have first claim on limited resources.

But Kennedy told the story of the Irishman who threw his cap over the wall so that he had no choice but to follow—and like the Irishman, we threw our caps over the wall of space. American ingenuity was never finer.

Over the next several years, the Mercury and Gemini programs rapidly demonstrated the technology and techniques needed for a moon mission. For a time, it appeared we might easily best JFK’s target date and leave the Soviets in the (space) dust. Then, having solved so many problems in such surprisingly short order, NASA’s leaders succumbed to what came to be called “go fever.” They pressed ahead with unrealistically optimistic schedules for the final phase, the Apollo program. They cut corners and overlooked critical deficiencies. In January 1967, three astronauts paid the price when they were killed in their Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch pad test while preparing for the first Earth orbital flight.

It seemed that this tragedy might end public support for the space program altogether, or at least force abandonment of Kennedy’s deadline. But there were reasons to continue taking risks. U.S. intelligence reported that the Soviets were likely preparing to launch some sort of manned moon mission of their own. And besides, America would never have become independent, united, and free without cutting some corners and taking big risks. “Go fever” was a very American state of mind.

So NASA forged on. And late in 1968, NASA proposed a startling, improvised leap ahead. It would send Apollo 8 to orbit the moon, several missions ahead of schedule—a space spectacular, even if its command module lacked the capability to land.

On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8, crewed by Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders, was on its way to Earth’s closest celestial neighbor, 240,000 miles away. To enter into lunar orbit, its engine had to fire precisely while the spacecraft was on the far side of the moon, out of radio contact with mission control. And to return to Earth, the same held true or Apollo 8 would crash into the moon, be trapped in orbit forever, or be sent on a return trajectory that missed Earth. Americans collectively held their breath during the radio blackout. Apollo 8 orbited the moon 10 times over 20 hours.

On one of their lunar orbits, the astronauts were startled to see a wonderful blue marble emerge over the desolate surface of the moon, against the pitch black of space, and they scrambled for their still cameras; the result became the classic photograph, Earthrise.

On December 24, the Apollo 8 crew broadcast to television sets across the globe pictures of the moon’s surface as it glided by, 60 nautical miles below. On their own initiative, as the lunar sunrise approached, they read, each taking a passage in turn, from the creation story in the King James Version of the Book of Genesis.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good…. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

Frank Borman offered a final benediction: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas—and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”