Christmas literature
Christmas Carols
Solstice: December 21 Christmas: December 25 Hanukkah: this year, sundown December 25 – sundown January 2 Kwanzaa: December 26 – January 1 New Year: January 1 1500s: A Haunting Song The Coventry Carol, 1534 Traditional With a haunting melody, it’s about Herod’s massacre of babies. See our holiday issues on the Massacre…
Abortion and the Christian Bible: A Consistent-Life Perspective
by Fr. Jim Hewes Biblical Foundations on the Sanctity of Life While the Bible may not explicitly address every modern issue, its teachings provide a framework that values life at all stages. There’s a difference between something that is unbiblical (contrary to biblical teachings) and something non-biblical (not found specifically in the bible). For example,…
The Christmas Truce of 1914
World War I was starting, and the war that was expected to be over by Christmas lasted for years. But on Christmas Eve and through Christmas Day, up and down the 500-mile front, about 100,000 soldiers out of a million had spontaneous truces. Christmas carols on one side were joined in by the other side,…
December 28: Day of the Massacre of the Innocents
Happy Holidays! For the source on the Massacre of the Holy Innocents, see the Biblical book of Matthew, chapter 2. This echoes Exodus 1:16. Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Enuma Okoro Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, pp. 80-81 (reading for) December 28 After Jesus was born, Matthew’s gospel records that King Herod was…
Pandemics Related to Christmas
by Rachel MacNair Widespread plagues have been a part of the human condition throughout history. Therefore, it stands to reason traces of them can be found in a holiday season often used to help people cope and be resilient. It’s a Wonderful Life When George Bailey was still a boy, one of the ways…
Dickens
From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (1843) Early in the novel, Ebenezer Scrooge is speaking to two men who are trying to solicit a donation to the poor. When he says he’ll donate “nothing,” they ask if he wishes to remain anonymous. “I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me…
It’s a Wonderful Movement
Now a popular classic movie for the season, It’s a Wonderful Life shows George Bailey standing on a snow-covered bridge, ready to kill himself by jumping into the icy river below. Defining himself by his failures, at the height of his despair, he was visited by an angel who showed him what the world would have…