SB writes:

It was a tiny, old, one-story building with foggy windows that looked closed. The place was near the corner of a nondescript commercial side street on the outskirts of town. I found it while walking with my oldest daughter as we waited on the day before Christmas for her sister to stand outside with a mask in a long line to get (another) ear piercing (viruses only live inside small places with too many people).

The “open” flag hung outside. As I entered the warm shop on a grey winter day, my face shield and glasses also fogged up, and I could not see. I removed them apologetically to wipe them off, finding a gentle older shopkeeper with impeccable English surrounded by foods and crafts from her native Poland. She wore no mask. I explained that it was hard to see, and she, without missing a beat, said it’s been hard for all of us to see. (more…)

I WISH you peace and joy this Christmas day. May God's love for our frail human nature give you courage and hope.  

"ONE Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. "All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen. "It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers." --- Dylan Thomas, "A Child's Christmas in Wales"  

  "DURING this Octave before Christmas, monks in medieval monasteries would receive extra treats or gifts each day. At the Saint Benedict Abbey of Fleury (now Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire), the antiphons were recited each day by monks of different rank beginning with the Abbott. "When the chanting was finished, one monk would offer a gift to each of his fellow monks. Often the gift would be associated with the antiphon of the day. "The monk assigned to December 19 might have been the gardener so that he could give a gift from the garden in honor of Our Lord the 'Root of Jesse' (O Radix Jesse). The Abbott would always give the gifts on the last day of the O Antiphons (December 23), and his gifts were often very generous. "Medieval expense records show that the foodstuff the Abbott brought to the table on this day of the Expectation were no meager gifts." --- "The Golden Nights," Rachel L. Lozowski  

  EIGHT years ago last week, on December 14, 2012, 26 people, including 20 children, were allegedly shot and killed in a matter of a few minutes at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut by 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who despite this alleged display of astonishing marksmanship was so physically inept that he could not, according to his father, tie his own shoes. An army of citizen journalists has arisen since then to challenge the Sandy Hook event, which many claim was political theater aimed at gun control. There is no hard evidence that anyone died at Sandy Hook and there is a great deal of evidence that no one did. This video presents some of the most outstanding research and the case against the official story. The children who allegedly died that day were never taken to the hospital, as is standard emergency procedure (even in cases of lethal gunshot wounds). Their bodies supposedly lay rotting for many hours in the school and no parents were admitted inside. Ambulances and EMT's also waited outside and never did a thing. Despite this glaring negligence, the parents, many of whom were actors or had been previously affiliated with the government, the Democratic Party and the Council for Foreign Relations, never filed lawsuits and instead became smiling political celebrities visibly basking in interviews on national TV and traveling the country, advocating gun control and new surveillance of the "mentally ill." A fundraising…

    I Believe in Father Christmas (Song by Gregory Lake) They said there'll be snow at Christmas They said there'll be peace on earth But instead it just kept on raining A veil of tears for the virgin birth I remember one Christmas morning A winter's light and a distant choir And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell And their eyes full of tinsel and fire They sold me a dream of Christmas They sold me a silent night And they told me a fairy story 'Till I believed in the Israelite And I believed in father Christmas And I looked to the sky with excited eyes 'Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn And I saw him and through his disguise I wish you a hopeful Christmas I wish you a brave new year All anguish, pain and sadness Leave your heart and let your road be clear They said there'll be snow at Christmas They said there'll be peace on earth Hallelujah, Noel be it heaven or hell The Christmas we get we deserve  

  A JOYFUL carol from 16th-century Spain.  

I SAW this comment after a recording of this beautiful carol:

I grew up in California, pretty much an atheist. I lived in England for two years, and while singing in a choir in Sussex I had a kind of spiritual awakening while contemplating a chord progression of Bach from the Christmas Oratorio. I love Christmas in England.

And another commenter wrote back:

God is calling us all upward to dignity and rightness in Him.We feel this in music, we suspect it in darkness, but when we really see Him in the light and love that He is, we see how mistaken we have been. As it is written, the sun is always shining, but it is us who allow sin to cause a tiny moon to eclipse the enormous star. God be praised. God above all with Jesus Christ His only begotten son, who lives and reigns in the Holy Spirit. One God forever and ever, Amen.

Once in Royal David’s City

Once in royal David’s city,
Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her baby
In a manger for His bed:
Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ her little child. (more…)

GOV. Tom Wolfe and his henchman, Health Secretary Dr. Richard Levine (aka "Rachel"), have apparently pushed their luck. Forcing many businesses to shut down just days before Christmas, when they were already crippled by months of closure, is not being accepted with the same passivity as their previous unconstitutional actions. Dozens of restaurants and gyms, more joining every day, are defying their latest orders to close down to all indoor business. A Facebook group Pennsylvania Opening Businesses/Defying Governor's Orders has 50,000 members. As Natalie Wilhelm, owner of Jean Louis Bistro in Lebanon, wrote: We shut down the first time but we simply cannot shut down a second time due to the huge hit it’s taken on our restaurant and staff who need to provide for their families as well. So happy to see so many others standing up and fighting back as well. Wolf's orders came months after a federal court declared his previous restrictions unconstitutional. Judge William Stickman IV's decision is currently being appealed, but it was emphatic in its denunciation of the government's actions. Stickman wrote: [G]ood intentions toward a laudable end are not alone enough to uphold governmental action against a constitutional challenge. Indeed, the greatest threats to our system of constitutional liberties may arise when the ends are laudable, and the intent is good—especially in a time of emergency. In an emergency, even a vigilant public may let down its guard over its constitutional liberties only to…

I PREVIOUSLY wrote of a bird who knocked insistently at our front door just when we happened to be talking about him. We see birds fly by our windows all the time. They live their busy lives parallel to ours. They peck and forage at the ground outside. But they occasionally appear -- perhaps this is just projection -- to tire of the great outdoors. They want in. Is it possible that just as we wish we could fly, they wish they could sit in a chair? You know, the grass is always greener ... In fact, a little, chirping wren walked right in our back door a few months ago. After flying through the living room and up the stairs, into the bathroom and around the bed where my husband was peacefully snoring, he clearly had had enough and wanted to leave. The indoors might look intriguing from the other side of the window, but perhaps aren't that interesting, from an avian perspective. Maybe the same thing would happen if we could soar through the sky. I don't know, but I would like to try. Here is the touching story of a cardinal who knocked at someone's window. Robert Barrow writes: As we removed the final assortment of clutter, preparing to lock the door for the last time and depart, I walked into the living room where my sister had died with the assistance of Hospice months ago -- checking one…