It helps to remember under what circumstances it happened. The nation was occupied by a hated foreign power. Reminders were all around, a part of daily life: soldiers garrisoned in the cities and around the countryside, heavy taxation imposed, even on poor people, to finance the occupation. The holy temple, the presence of which reassured […]
On Christmas Eve
December 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Ebeneezer Scrooge is one of the great characters in all fiction and his story In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is told and dramatized every December. It is one of the great morality tales in all of literature. It is also an eloquent articulation of the transformative power of love, which is the heart of […]
No Ear May Hear Him Coming
December 8, 2013 by 1 Comment
The weeks before Christmas are a study in contrasts. On the one hand, our consumer-driven, market economy is in overdrive. Retail business is brisk, store hours are long, shoppers follow sale after sale, looking for bargains. In fact, retail merchants depend on the weeks before Christmas for a positive bottom line at year’s end. I […]
Hold to the Good 
A Season of Waiting
O, You better watch out, You better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town. “Christmas Creep” has been happening around here since before Halloween. The great engine of American retail commerce has been operating at full speed for weeks, urging us to shop and purchase in […]