FROM The Christmas Book by Francis Weiser (St. Augustine Academy Press, 1952), p. 152:

One of the most beloved of all the Saints long ago was St. Nicholas of Myra. In many parts of Europe children still believe St. Nicholas appears to them on the eve of his Feast (December sixth) laden with gifts. His role is that of a heavenly messenger, coming at the beginning of Advent and admonishing little children to prepare their hearts for properly welcoming the Christ Child at Christmas. He is usually impersonated by a man wearing a long white beard, dressed in the vestments of a bishop, with miter and crozier, a friendly and saintly figure, who comes down from heaven once a year to visit the children, whose patron saint he is. He examines them, questioning them on their Catechism and hearing their prayers. After entreating them to be good boys and girls and to get ready for a devout and holy Christmas, he distributes candy and fruit and departs with a loving farewell, leaving the little ones filled with holy awe and joy.”

In America, his image has, as Fisheaters put it, “been mixed up with a lot of traits and imagery from sources as disparate as the poetry of Clement Moore, pagan Norse mythology, and American advertising.”

A wealth of information about St. Nicholas, both legendary and real, can be found at the St. Nicholas Center:

Was St. Nicholas real?
Yes, he was a real 4th century Greek bishop who lived in Asia Minor, along the Mediterranean coast.

Was St. Nicholas a Turk?
No, Nicholas was Greek, living in a Greek province (Lycia, Asia Minor) that was part of the Roman Empire, centuries before Turks came. The region was Lycia, now in modern-day Turkey.

Was Santa/St. Nicholas a pagan god?
The Germanic god Thor may have influenced Santa’s characteristics somewhat, but Santa primarily developed from the real bishop St. Nicholas.

An ancient English hymn, a Bulgarian song and a popular American tune, all dedicated to the saint, are sung below. From Godes Druth, written by the English hermit St. Godric of Finchale in the 12th century:

Saint Nicholas, God’s beloved,
Build for us a fair bright house;
At the birth, at the bier,
Saint Nicholas, bring us safely there.

 Saint Nicholas, glorious Confessor of Christ, assist us in thy loving kindness.

(Indulgence 100 days)

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“THIS one of the heavenly bodies, which we tenant, was created to be as it were the garden, the Eden, of His Incarnation; and He adorned it in His love, before Adam, the first copy of Him, lived among its Asiatic shades. Perhaps it lay for ages in the glad sunshine, solitary, silent, in beautiful desolation, and He took complacence in the adorning of it. He loved perchance to see its beauty ripen, rather than to rise up at once complete. Continents sank slowly at His will, and new oceans rolled above their mountain tops, or elevated steppes. New lands rose out of the bosom of the deep. Floras of marvellous foliage waved in the sun, and the wisdom and the joy of the Babe of Bethlehem was in them. Faunas, strange, gigantic, terrible, possessed the waters and the land, of His fashioning, and for the delight of His glory. The central fires wrought beautifully and delicately the metals and the gems, which were for the altars of the Babe of Bethlehem, for the tiara of His Vicar, or the chasubles of His priests. The rocks and marbles ripened on the planet, as the fruits ripen on a tree and the Babe, the Wisdom of the Father, disported Himself in the vast operation, the pacific uniformity, and the magnificent slowness of His own laws. The grandeur of those huge-leaved trees, the unwieldy life of those extinct monsters, the loveliness of now sunken lands, were all for Him who has just now been born in Bethlehem, and were not only for Him, but were also His own doing.

“Bethlehem then was not His first home. We must seek Him in an eternal home if indeed He be older than the angels, the eldest-born of creatures. The dark cave within and the moonlit slope without are not like the scenery of His everlasting home. He is the Eternal Word. He is the first Word ever spoken, and He was spoken by God, and He is in all things equal to Him by whom He was spoken…”

— Fr. Frederick Faber, Bethlehem (Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1900), p. 7

“WHY, we ask, ever since men have been men — or rather since they became civilized — why have men in all times and places been irresistibly borne to differentiate and divide the functions of the two sexes? Do we not have here strict testimony to the recognition by all mankind of a truth and a law above man?

“To sum up, wherever women wear men’s dress, it is be considered a factor, over the long term, in disintegrating human order.” [bold added]

— “Notification Concerning Men’s Dress Worn by Women,” Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, 1960

“NON-Whites in our society are all in agreement that White ‘supremacism’ and White ‘racism’ are evils.

“This is because they see White people as tribal competitors and want to weaken us.

“It is not because they think ‘supremacism’ or ‘racism’ are bad things – quite the contrary.”

— Wyatt Stagg

Angelus ad virginem is a medieval carol that has been sung continuously for about 700 years. It was brought to Britain by French friars in the 13th or 14th century. The oldest surviving appearance of the carol is in a manuscript from 1360.

Based on the Hail Mary, this cheerful carol remains popular with choral ensembles today. To be fair, it truly deserves the title of popular music.

(I’m sorry, but I do not know who is performing this wonderful version.)

Translation from the Latin:

Angelus ad virginem

The angel came to the Virgin,
entering secretly into her room;
calming the Virgin’s fear, he said, “Hail!
Hail, queen of virgins:
you will conceive the Lord of heaven and earth
and bear him, still a virgin,
to be the salvation of mankind;
you will be made the gate of heaven,
the cure of sins. Read More »

TODAY is the feast day of St. Barbara. Like many Catholic women in history, this saint of the third century was no stranger to controversy:

Barbara — one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers — was the beautiful daughter of a rich and powerful pagan named Dioscuros. She grew up in Nikomedia (in modern Turkey). To keep her a virgin, her father locked her in a tower when he was away, a tower with only two windows. Upon his return from one journey, he found three windows in the tower instead of two. When he asked Barbara about this, she confessed that she’d become a Christian after being baptized by a priest disguised as a physician, and that she’d asked that a third window be made as a symbol of the Holy Trinity.

She was then denounced by her father, who was ordered by the local authorities to put her to death. She escaped from her tower, but her father caught and killed her. When he dealt the death blow, he was immediately struck by lightning. (Source)

St. Barbara is a patroness of the dying. For approved prayers for her intercession, go here.

St. Barbara, pray for us!

“MONIKA Schaefer, a Canadian citizen of German descent, spent 10 months in a German prison in 2018. Her crime? Making a six minute video that went viral and says things forbidden in Germany. Her brother, who lives in Germany spent 5 years in prison, much of it in solitary, also for the crime of saying what is forbidden. She has a big heart and big courage to keep speaking the truth in the face of a most pervasive and universally believed lie and this lie is very much tied to the events unfolding in the middle east right now.”

Link

“YOU know you are a defeated people when your conquerors say the way you have lived for hundreds of years is an evil political ideology.”

— Mr. S. (a reader of this site)

“WHEN the heart is sick because ‘truths are diminished among the children of men,’ and the weight of unintelligibly triumphant and abundant sin lies heavy on it, and the mind is dragged through thorny places till it bleeds, then the frightened soul flies back to that moment of the first love of Jesus, and rests there with the more full assurance and abiding calm, because it knows that that first act of love is not ended yet. It has stretched from that old midnight at Nazareth to this hour, and is not weakened by the stretch. It can bear the weight of millions of new creations. It will wear for untold centuries. Old as it is, it is still new. It is unending. Its arms are round the majesty of God, its kiss is on his feet, for evermore.”

— Fr. Frederick Faber, Bethlehem (Tan Books, p. 71)

COME, thou Redeemer of the earth,
and manifest thy virgin-birth:
let every age adoring fall;
such birth befits the God of all.

Veni, redemptor gentium;
ostende partum Virginis;
miretur omne saeculum:
talis decet partus Deum.

From Veni, Redemptor Gentium

German Advent calendar

YESTERDAY, as my husband and I were driving home from a twilight walk, Christmas lights went on all around us. Someone had turned on a master switch, or so it seemed. Lighted icicles dangled from gutters and electric nets encased shrubbery. Snowman inflatables rose from the dead on suburban lawns, a stuffed Santa held onto a roof for dear life and bright red boxes of peppermint bark adorned the aisles of Trader Joe’s. Was this Christmas Eve or December 2nd? I don’t remember so much decoration this early in the season when I was a child, except in stores. I felt as if I was in a Christmas theme park. None of it expressed to me the beauty and anticipation of Advent. Imagine if you received a birthday cake a month before your birthday. Would it mean as much?

Advent calls on us to be especially counter-cultural. We are asked to resist the trappings of a Christmas celebrated too soon. We are asked to seek silence, at least inner silence, and cultivate true sorrow for our sins. Take a walk beneath winter’s penitential skies. Thank God for all the innumerable benefits bestowed upon you. Get up perhaps just 15 minutes earlier in the morning. Find time for penance, spiritual reading and meditation on these bottomless mysteries. Even if you have a very busy life, lift your mind in prayer for minutes here and there as often as you can during the day. Don’t let this opportunity pass to prepare yourself for the profound truths of Christmas. Your life is whizzing by. Christmas is an 18-wheel freight truck without brakes careening down the highway. It’s a ferris wheel that won’t stop so you can, please, please get off — and yet you have a soul to save and an infant Savior to love with all your heart and mind.

I do not mean to suggest that we should go to the Puritanical extreme of not enjoying the sparkling lights, decorated greenery, music of the season and gift-buying. I don’t mean to suggest we should cut ourselves off from the brightened mood of pre-Christmas when we find it. We should strive for balance. We are soul and body.

In vain did the angels sing on that December night; in vain did shepherds receive and welcome the invitation to adore the Babe and know Him; in vain did the Magi come from the east, asking where they were to find the crib of the King that was born. At this last example, the city of Jerusalem was somewhat moved; but the astonishment was only for a moment, and the old indifference soon stifled the good tidings.

Thus it is, O Jesus, that Thou comest unto darkness, and darkness does not comprehend Thee. We beseech Thee, let our darkness comprehend the light, and desire it. (First Sunday of Advent, The Liturgical Year)

More from Dom Prosper Guéranger’s Liturgical Year:

If, now that we have described the characteristic features of Advent which distinguish it from the rest of the year, we would penetrate into the profound mystery which occupies the mind of the Church during this season, we find that the mystery of the Coming, or Advent, of Jesus is at once simple and threefold. It is simple for it is the one same Son of God that is coming; it is threefold because He comes at three different times and in three different ways.

‘In the first coming,’ says St. Bernard, ‘He comes in the flesh and in weakness; in the second, He comes in spirit and in power; in the third, He comes in glory and in majesty; and the second coming is the means whereby we pass from the first to the third.’ Read More »

“A BLACK or an Arab with a piece of paper that says they’re Irish is Irish in the same way that a man with a piece of paper that says they’re a woman is a woman.

“Blacks and Arabs will never be Irish and trannies will never be women. This used to be common sense.”

— Apolitical

“THESE words were composed by Spencer the Rover
Who’d travelled Great Britain and most parts of Wales.
He had been so reduced which caused great confusion
And that was the reason he went on the roam.

“In Yorkshire near Rotherham he had been on his rambles,
Being weary of travelling he sat down to rest.
At the foot of yonder mountain there runs a clear fountain;
With bread and cold water he himself did refresh.

“It tasted more sweeter than the gold he had wasted,
More sweeter than honey and gave more content.
But the thoughts of his babies lamenting their father
Brought tears in their eyes which made him lament. Read More »

Video link

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Henry Kissinger,  1950 

IN memory of the late Henry Kissinger, who died this week at the age of 100, some relevant reflections by Sufyan Jan:

Although South American jungles and the sands of the Middle East might reflect the general public view of the communist image, perhaps this is a ‘desert sands mirage’? Contemporary ‘Commies’ wash and dress well, and attend Georgetown University in between martinis and formulating America’s domestic and foreign policies. They fly business or first class to London or Bern Switzerland and sit in the cool smooth leather of Chesterfield lounge chairs at the local Gentleman’s Club. These pseudo-Roman literati, travel ‘long haul’ to charge the batteries of the sagging ‘culture war tension machine’. The current urgency is palpable and some ‘blunt force’ revisionism will be required to set the record straight on the top end of town ‘commies in suits’. Read More »

WILLIAM Makis, MD features several Japanese videos at his Substack about the rise of sudden deaths in the country, including a very moving video about relatives of these people.