I have attempted to lure readers with some Christmastime totty ( I just do not have it in me to post any half-nude hunky guys in Christmas outfits for our gal readers), but I would suppose that most Christians are now either frantic with last-minute gift- or food-shopping, or preparing for evening church services.
The B team will be out of range, skiing and cavorting in beautiful snow and invigorationg cold for a week after Christmas, but I have pre-posted mostly to keep my generous paycheck coming from Maggie's.
So perhaps only our Jewish, Hindu, Ba'hai, Buddhist, and Muslim friends will be reading this post, but that's fine with me.
Top pic of global warming is via Pirate. Pic of the super-special Christmas present below is probably from Theo but I am not sure.
In my view, the Christmas Eve candlelight service is not to be missed, even though I do not think of Christmastime as a particularly holy day in the church calendar. Christmas is a magical, miracle, beautiful time, but not too holy really, as least in the Protestant tradition.
The prayer: Be born in us today.
Our family doesn't do gifts, but we will assemble to church tonight to squeeze in, and will host a fine Christmas feast for 32 tomorrow at the Barrister homestead. The feast is the gift, bringing home-made foods are the gifts to eachother. Family, friends, and neighbors, coat and tie dress code including the youth, plenty of eggnog and good wines but no Festivus Pole.
First, Mead's annual Yule Log post. One quote:
Non-Christians, including the 5% of Americans who adhere to a non-Christian religion and the 18% who either claimed no religion at all or chose not to answer the pollsters, need to know about Christianity too. Religious education has pretty much fallen by the wayside in American life today. That’s a problem in more ways than one; I see the consequences all the time when students I teach – and policy makers and journalists I know – simply do not comprehend the cultural foundations of American politics and cannot understand the ways that so many people here and around the world are moved by religious values and ideas. I have taught a course on the relationship of American religious ideas to American foreign policy in some of our leading colleges, and I have had smart, well traveled and otherwise well-read students in that course who have never opened a Bible (or any other holy book) in their lives and simply had no idea why so many other people read and study it every day of their lives.
Indeed. FYI, Prof, I may be an older Ivy-Leaguer but I read a Bible verse each morning, contemplate it, and pray. Before the morning coffee. As I always say, it has never harmed me to follow that discipline. Find a church tonight, you agnostics and atheists and unbelievers, etc. It won't hurt you at all.
Second, an excellent essay our loyal reader Buddy found: Is America Becoming a Pagan Kingdom?
