Howard Thurman on the work of Christmas

Hat tip to Beth Ares.

Merry Christmas 2021

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Merry Christmas 2020

Another selection lifted from Decker’s Dispatches from the Asylum

Happy Holidays 2020

I lifted this from Decker’s Dispatches from the Asylum.  Every one of his posts is followed by a great music video.

Santa Claus in the 21st century

An interview with Santa’s lawyer by John Scalzi.   Hat tip to the Weekly Sift.

The truth about Santa Claus

The day after Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flocks,

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart.

==Howard Thurman

Merry Christmas 2016

Happy Birthday, Jesus by Addison Del Mastro for The American Conservative.

Norman Rockwell’s images of Christmas

Is there any artist today who is as well-beloved as Norman Rockwell?

Is there any mass-circulation publication that would showcase an artist’s works as the Saturday Evening Post did Rockwell’s?

Husbands and wives as last-minute shoppers

For details, go to The Washington Post’s Wonkblog.

Hat tip to Kevin Drum.

The best Christmas present ever?

Hat tip to Avedon’s Sideshow.

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2014

This is a 14th century Irish carol which tells the story of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary.  The lyrics are a Latin version of Chapter One of the Gospel of Luke.

Source: Saturday Chorale

Hat tip to Making Light.

It used to be the thought that counted

From Candorville.

C.S. Lewis on the varied meanings of Christmas

C.S. Lewis, the great Christian writer, wrote in 1957 that the holiday we call Christmas and celebrate on Dec. 25 is really three holidays in one.

Three things go by the name of Christmas.  One is a religious festival.  This is important and obligatory for Christians, but … it can be of no interest to anyone else …

The second … is a popular holiday, an occasion for merry-making and hospitality.  If it were my business to have a ‘view’ on this, I should say I much approve of merry-making.  But what I approve of much more is everybody minding his own business. …

But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everybody’s business.  I mean of course the commercial racket.

The idea that everybody is obligated to buy presents for all their friends, and buy cards to send to all their loved ones, friends and acquaintances, is a contemporary idea and not part of the historical idea of Christmas, Lewis wrote.  He condemned the commercial Christmas holiday on the following grounds.

1.  It gives on the whole much more pain than pleasure. You only have to say over Christmas with a family who seriously try to ‘keep’ it (in its third, or commercial, aspect) in order to see that the thing is a nightmare.  Long before December 25th everyone is worn out—physically worn out by weeks of daily struggle in overcrowded shops, mentally worn out by the effort to remember all the right recipients and to think of suitable gifts for them.  They are in no trim for merry-making, much less (if they should want to) to take part in a religious act.  They look far more as if there had been a long illness in the house.

2.  Most of it is involuntary.  The modern rule is that anyone can force you to give him a present by sending you a quite unprovoked present of his own.  It is almost a blackmail.  Who has not heard the wail of despair, and indeed of resentment, when, at the last moment, just as everyone hoped that the nuisance was over for one more year, the unwanted gift from Mrs. Busy (whom we can hardly remember) flops un-welcomed through the letter-box and back to the dreadful shops one of us has to go?

3.  Things are given as presents which no mortal has ever bought for himself — gaudy and useless gadgets, ‘novelties’ because nobody was ever fool enough to make their like before.  Have we really no better use for materials and for human skill and time than the spend them on all this rubbish?

4.  The nuisance.  For after all, during the racket we still have our ordinary and necessary shopping to do, and the racket trebles the labor of it.

Lewis wrote that if the Christmas shopping season is necessary to keep the retail stores in business, he would sooner give them the money for nothing and write it off as a charity.

Snow falls on the Holy Land

Click on Historic snow fall turns Holy Land into the scenes we see on Christmas cards for more pictures from the U.K.’s Daily Mail.  Hat tip to naked capitalism.

The war on “Happy Holidays”

Click to view

Click on Candorville for more cartoons by Darrin Bell.

I still prefer the traditional Christmas carols

Click on xkcd for the source of this chart.

I know of no popular songs more beautiful than the traditional Christmas carols.  It would be a shame if they were crowded out by the modern non-sectarian holiday carols.  The modern carols are all right for what they are.  They are just not as beautiful at the traditional carols.

Click on The Hymns and Carols of Christmas for a comprehensive list of links to recordings and lyrics of every traditional Christmas song I ever heard of, and many that I haven’t.

If Santa were a CEO

Click to enlarge

Click on Tom Toles for more of his cartoons.

Christmas approaches

The Christmas season reminds us that, among other things, that there is reason for joy even at the darkest time of the year.

Click on Christmas approaches for more great Christmas season photos on the Boston Globe’s The Big Picture web site.

The spirit of Christmas economic stimulus

Double click to enlarge

Click on Candorville for more like this.

The has-been

Click to enlarge

Click on Candorville for more like this.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I wish everyone a

Merry Christmas

Felix Natividad

Joyeux Noel

Froliche Weinachten

Buon Natale

Happy Hanukkah (retroactively).

Quality Kwanzaa

Splendid Solstice

Pleasant Pancha Ganapati

Beautiful Bodhi Day (belatedly)

Excellent Eid (very, very belatedly)

Fabulous Festivus

Happy New Year

or, if you’re not covered by any of the above, Season’s Greetings

or a Bah! Humbug! if you reject any expression of good will because it is politically or doctrinally incorrect.

Are there any popular songs more beautiful?

Are there any more beautiful songs, known and sung by almost everyone, than the traditional Christmas carols?

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

A man dressed as Santa on a small lake in Hamburg, Germany

Click on The Big Picture to see this and 36 other great Christmas photos from the Boston Globe’s web site