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One of the things I'd forgotten about, the North Koreans had taken the Pueblo and crew hostage about a year prior. The crew was released around that time and Apollo 8 was informed of this development. I guess it was Frank Borman who orchestrated the reading of Genesis, if not strictly his idea, he was Director at that point and it was done absolutely perfectly, still get chills every time. I think the usual suspects protested, in fact, but everyone told them to get bent. It was a completely appropriate thing to do, and only an idiot would have taken offense. Later astronauts were a little more circumspect about some of this. Former heavyweight boxer Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin took communion on the Moon, but it wasn't advertised.

Something else for you to 'remember' was when the audio from this broadcast was used in a 1995 Fox TV Series, "Space: Above and Beyond"! The setting was an interstellar war and the heroes were marooned in space at Christmas, only able to receive communications and their spacecraft was without power to get home. The audio from Apollo 8 comes at about 20 minutes.

Very well played in my opinion and I make a point to watch this episode again every Christmas. The series died after the single season due, IMHO, to getting too complex and adding ambiguous morality too quickly for audiences to take hold.