THERE’S no gender confusion in a Strauss waltz.

The Book of Hours, Flemish miniaturist (1470-1500)

I HAVE been in the sick bay on and off for a couple of days, but I wanted to get to my computer this morning and wish you a very Happy New Year. May you and your families have peace and many blessings. May your homes be preserved from all evils and misfortunes this year.

New Year’s Day is a secular holiday, but it has beautiful mystical significance as well. Today is the Feast of the Circumcision. A little primer:

Why is this day so called?

Because the secular year begins with this day, as the ecclesiastical year begins with the first Sunday of Advent.

What should we do on this day?

An offering for the new year should be made to God, asking His grace that we may spend the year in a holy manner, for the welfare of the soul.

Why do we wish each other a “happy new year?” Read More »

A 17-year-old boy is the new face of Cover Girl cosmetics.

And the National Women’s Hockey League now accepts “men.” Writes Mike King:

The subversive war on the institutions of marriage and family has been raging for decades, and with devastating results. But this war on sexual identity strikes even deeper. You see, normal men are not attracted to butchy manly women; and normal women are not attracted to girly boys. By tampering with natural roles — transgender confusion being the most extreme manifestation — the Globalists are screwing up the minds and spirits of our young people so badly that most of them will never attract (beyond the momentarily physical, if even that) and get married in the first place. Loneliness, alienation, depression and state servitude await the vast majority of millennial and subsequent generations to follow — and it is all by design.

A LIST of pro-Trump hate-crimes has been allegedly debunked. The list includes the “Texas family whose car and motorcycle were burned, and whose garage was spray-painted with “n—-r lover” and a “University of Louisiana at Lafayette student who now admits she fabricated her claim that men wearing Trump hats attacked her, knocked her down, and stole her headscarf.”

IN THE HOLY NATIVITY OF OUR LORD

— Richard Crashaw (d. 1649)

 CHORUS
Come we shepherds, whose blest sight
Hath met love’s noon in nature’s night;
Come lift up our loftier song
And wake the sun that lies too long.

To all the world of well-stol’n joy
He slept; and dreamt of no such thing.
While we found out Heaven’s fairer eye
And kissed the cradle of our King.
Tell him he rises now, too late
To show us aught worth looking at. Read More »

Madonna and Child with Saints (detail), Cesare Vecellio; 1521

MAY you be as simple as the shepherds, may you be as wise as the Kings.

May the Divine Baby honored this glorious day help you know the approachability of God.

Because by the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of Thy glory hath shone anew upon the eyes of our mind; that while we acknowledge Him to be God seen by men, we may be drawn by Him to the love of things unseen.

— From the Preface to the Christmas Mass

I send wishes for a happy and blessed Christmas to readers of this site.

PAINTINGS by the Swedish artist Carl Larsson (1853-1919) [see my post about Larsson and his family here], can be viewed at It’s About Time.

“Encountering a mortally-wounded B-17 limping back to England, Luftwaffe ace Franz Stigler anticipated an easy kill and another opportunity to avenge his brother’s death at the opening of WWII. As he approached the virtually helpless American plane [four days before Christmas in 1943], however, he saw the faces of the dead and wounded crewmen. Then, Stigler’s eyes met those of pilot Charles Brown. Despite the potentially severe consequences of letting an enemy plane escape, Stigler felt that he had to answer a higher call of honor . . . mercy. Read More »

STEVE writes:

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is an extremely inspiring story. It is an inspiration to Christians the world over that those soldiers on that cold night in Flanders Fields, initiated by the Germans, came together in a spirit of chivalrous brotherhood with their opponents on the other side of the trenches and laid down their weapons in honor of the Birthday of the Prince of Peace.

It was perhaps the greatest example in world history of a large number of men, particularly soldiers, following Christ’s commandment to be peacemakers, as you can see in this New American article. [More at Lew Rockwell.] The 2005 Joyeux Noel movie doesn’t show that the German soldiers took great risks to get the British to agree to the truce.

This story needs to be better told as an inspiration to all, especially in the dangerous and eerily similar world we find ourselves in exactly 100 years later, with the same Rothschild bankster forces that started the First World War now trying to start the third. The decent Germans were utterly demonized by malicious British and American hate propaganda, falsely accused of ‘bayonetting Belgium babies,’ raping nuns, crucifying British prisoners, and creating ‘cadaver factories’ and using the body parts of Allied/Entente soldiers for industrial use.

This utterly depraved lying about the German nation is largely responsible for the world we live in today. Read More »

The Saint Elias Cathedral in the Al-Jadideh quarter of Aleppo will hold its first Christmas ceremony in four years tomorrow. Built in 1873, the church was damaged in three missile attacks by militants. RT News reports on Christmas celebrations in the city where Russia and the Syrian government have brought the civil war to an end.

BRANDON MARTINEZ writes at Non-Aligned Media:

We know that Angela Merkel and her globalist regime are committed to the destruction of Germany and the erasure of its culture from existence. By slaughtering indigenous Germans with a truck, [Turkish migrant Anis] Amri was merely executing Merkel’s program for the nation she occupies. She and other self-hating, traitorous German politicians have frankly expressed their desire to make Germans a minority in their own country. A self-hating radical from Germany’s Green Party, Stefanie von Berg, delivered a deranged speech to parliament gloating about the prospect of ethnic Germans becoming a minority in their own cities, hailing her own people’s decline as a “good” thing that should be embraced in order to create a “supercultural” melting pot.

FROM Carol Field’s Celebrating Italy (William Morrow and Company, 1990):

“By the middle of December you can smell Christmas in the crisp air, in the chestnuts roasting at street corners, and in the steamy fragrances spilling out the doors of bakeries and restaurants. You can feel it in the sharp drop of temperatures as fountains frost over, leaving tritons and nymphs riding on icicles. You can hear it in the mournful tunes played by the zampognari, Italy’s bagpipers, shepherds who have come down from the Abruzzo mountains dressed in crisscrossed leather leggings that reach up to the knees, shaggy sheepskin vests worn sheared side out, and slouchy felt hats. The keening sounds of their bagpipes and rough rustic flutes swirl eerily through the streets, a melancholy poetry that is as familiar to Rome as Santa’s sleighbells are to an American. The zampognari walk slowly in twos and threes up and down the Via Condotti and the Via della Croce and the other elegant shopping streets below the Spanish Steps, where, starling reminders of the shepherds at the manger in Bethlehem, they play their ancient instruments in front of rich window displays of furs, leathers and silks. The zampognari arrive some days before Christmas, but they used to arrive much earlier and always charged a set rate for a nine-day serenade to the Madonna called a novena. Now they merely hold out their hats and everyone drops in a few coins or bills.”

At the Famous-Barr Department Store, now long gone, in St. Louis

ALAN writes:

This comes under the heading “What Americans Have Surrendered.”

At the St. Louis Public Library, the staff association newsletter of December 1961 tells us:

“That we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year can be plainly seen throughout the Library.  Almost every department has been busy decorating for the holiday season…  …a lovely Madonna card display….Christmas posters in the windows….red and silver candles…”

1966:  Christmas trees are decorated in multiple Library departments.

1967:  “The Christmas tree, trimmed with red and gold satin balls hung from velvet bows and lighted with miniature colored lights….gave a festive air” to the annual Christmas Breakfast, after which staff members sang Christmas carols around the big tree in the Library’s Main Hall.

1968:  “Christmas decorations in the Education Department this year included a crèche lent by” one staff member. “Some of the little wooden houses and figurines were brought from Germany many years ago by his grandfather….   Children visiting the Children’s Room are amazed by the popcorn and cranberry strings on the old-fashioned Christmas tree.”

1969:   “The usual Christmas beauty of red and green, tinsel and holly, candles and bells, and of course a beautiful Christmas tree, were all in readiness” for the 275 people who attended the Christmas breakfast.  “Following tradition, the singing of carols around the huge Christmas tree in the Main Hall made a perfect ending to the breakfast.” Read More »

ISRAEL SHAMIR, a Russian/Israeli writer who advocates the “One Man, One Vote, One State” solution seeking to unite Palestine and Israel in one democratic state, thinks David Friedman, Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, would bring about positive developments.

So, do not be afraid of bad Mr Friedman. He is likely to do a lot of good. And definitely he can’t make things any worse. Read More »

Snowstorm, Edward Willis Redfield

CHRISTMAS TREES

— Robert Frost

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas. Read More »