WHEN I think of the many children, mostly boys, who are spending these post-Christmas days almost entirely inside with electronic games, I am reminded of a comment a Polish artist friend of mine once made. My son, who was about 13 at the time, was visiting his son and they were playing some kind of computer game. The father sat down for a minute and observed them. Then he said to my son, in his heavy accent, “If I had spent my days doing this for hours when I was a boy, I would have shot myself.”

Destroy the imagination of children and human beings become the most pliable of creatures. And that’s what spending a childhood with electronic games does. It destroys the imagination. It replaces silence and constructive boredom and annoying social interaction with ceaseless noise and novelty. Children today live in what the writer Anthony Esolen calls the “Kingdom of Noise.”

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FROM The New York Post:

An Iowa State University professor resigned after admitting he falsely claimed rabbit blood could be turned into a vaccine for the AIDS virus.

Dr. Dong-Pyou Han spiked a clinical test sample with healthy human blood to make it appear that the rabbit serum produced disease-fighting antibodies, officials said. Read More »

JOHN DEMPSEY writes:

The Garden of Eden (detail), Unknown German Master; c. 1410

THE CHOIR of King’s College sings Elizabeth Poston’s lovely version of “Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree.” The lyrics were written by an unknown poet in the 18th century and call to mind the tradition in the Middle Ages of decorating Christmas trees with apples, symbolic of the Tree of Knowledge.

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree

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Adoration of the Shepherds, Jacopo Bassano; 1544-45

TO all the readers of this site, I send my wishes for a Joyous Christmas.

TIM writes:

In the comments in the entry “Seeking a New Life after Lesbianism,” Leo Walker mentions his “crazy vision of the Army of the Redeemed marching into Heaven,” and gives your correspondent L.M. advice which I hope she is truly able to hear: we are all damaged goods.  Thinking about this comment, I was reminded of the ending to the great Flannery O’Connor short story “Revelation.”

In the final scene, the garrulous and vain protagonist Ruby Turpin, who prides herself a “respectable and proper” Southern woman, is recovering from a shock she received earlier in the story.  In a doctor’s waiting room, Ruby’s incessant and nosy chatter had raised the ire of an ill-tempered teenage girl who had thrown a book at her and told her “Go back to hell, you old wart hog.”

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ALAN M. writes:

Here is an interesting article on the disturbing claim that pedophilia is a “sexual orientation.” The piece is interesting for several reasons:

1. The focus is on normalizing pedophilia. Those darn slippery slope arguments keep on being proven by reality. This is coming and there is no rational argument against it given our culture’s prevailing presuppositions. Read More »

HENRY McCULLOCH writes:

That was an interesting, if depressing, post about the bizarre behaviour of Model-Korean Harvard undergraduate Eldo Kim.  Not for the first time — especially as I know many worthy and fully qualified people whom Harvard rejected (not coincidentally white gentile Americans) and a goodly number of cretins (the overwhelming majority not white gentile Americans, despite Harvard’s being in Massachusetts and founded by and for such Americans) upon whom Harvard bestowed the social Golden Ticket of admission — I find a Harvard story illuminates the pathologies of America in the grip of the multicultural Left. Read More »

THERE IS only one way that Jorge Bergoglio could possibly disguise the fact that he is anti-Catholic, and that is by keeping his mouth shut, which is something the Argentine Bomber could not possibly do. For he has the attention of the whole world and appears to be intoxicated by it. His loquacity is the loquacity of the least humble of men.

The Man Who Would Be Pope launched another verbal detonation against the Church yesterday, this time by making an outrageously blasphemous statement about the Mother of God. Just in time for Christmas. Read about it at Novus Ordo Watch.

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The first performance of The Nutcracker in 1892 at the Marinsky Theater

THE blogger Sunshine Mary and her husband took their children to a local performance of The Nutcracker. It was a new version of the story, in which many details were changed. For one, Clara’s father and uncle were nowhere to be found. Clara, apparently the child of divorce, lived with her mother. Instead of the scripted male characters, there was  “a large black man who comes dancing onto stage, shaking his hips all around Mrs. Stahlbaum and several other female dancers. He has no role in the story and his only purpose appears to be for the amusement he provides the lay-deez with his hip-shaking.”

Sunshine also writes:

Rather than charming girls in ballet slippers dressed as peppermint bon-bons, there were chubby teenagers in black pants and t-shirts vogueing – I kid you not. The older teenaged girls were dressed in bright-red flapper dresses with slits up each leg; one dance move involved them sitting on the floor facing the audience with their legs spread open. Read More »

L.M. writes:

I hope that my views aren’t offensive to you; I have lurked on your site for a long time, and I have seen some of the things that have been said about homosexuality and other types of perversions. I want to give a perhaps rare, but valid perspective on another side of these tendencies.

I am a young woman. As a teenager, I desperately longed for a young man to pursue me and make me his wife. I especially longed for a man to take charge and be the authority in our marriage. But I had no background for this and no idea of how to pursue it. Read More »

DR. Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

A few short years ago it was my privilege to be the director of the first doctoral dissertation approved by the Graduate Program in Foreign Languages and Literature of the University of Tehran.  I was put in touch with the student, a young lady, by a correspondent of some years (we shared a scholarly interest in the dramas of Henrik Ibsen) who taught on the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature at the same institution. I am deliberately omitting names because I wish to get no one in trouble.

As long as I have known my Iranian correspondent (for about ten years), he has sent me Christmas greetings every year. He did so again this year.

Our world is so topsy-turvy that from my institution, a branch of SUNY, I get only a bland “holiday” greeting (God forbid, pardoning the expression, we should mention the birthday of the Lord and Savior); but from the land of the Mullahs, in what must be, given the political reality, a somewhat risky gesture, I get an actual Merry Christmas.

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DIANA writes:

Most of the headlines about the carjacking and murder of a New Jersey lawyer at the Mall at Short Hills last Sunday are perfect examples of everything Lawrence Auster despised about journalism. “Shooting” ….”carjacking” ….only one headline mentioned the word “murder.”

Regarding these murdering fiends, they were apprehended very quickly, less than a week after the outrage. This suggests to me that they were all parolees. I will venture a guess that their priors are not petty, but consist of serious crimes. Let’s wait and see, but that’s what I think. Read More »

AT Tradition in Action, Lyle J. Arnold argues that Hollywood paved the way for the ’60s.

The valuable lesson for counter-revolutionaries here is that, already in the “good ole ‘50s,” the revolutionary forces in Hollywood were subtly undermining society and giving honor and political clout to rebels.

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THIS morning, I visited the grave of Lawrence Auster. I cut these greens from our yard, decorated them and placed them on the grave, which does not have a tombstone yet but will soon. The ground was partly snow-covered under the oak tree where he is buried. The sky was blue and the temperature was above freezing. The busyness and bustle of Christmas were all around, creating an audible din. But a cemetery is always set apart. The grave of a friend is one of the most precious things in this world. I know that my friend still exists. If he is not in Paradise yet, may he be there soon.

TEXANNE writes:

An Italian woman, Costanza Miriano, has written a book so threatening that the Spanish Health Minister (apparently a woman) is calling for it to be banned.

In this BBC interview, the writer mentions that she has also written a book for men, Marry Her and Die for Her, but the interviewer quickly changes the subject before this part of the marital relationship can be discussed. :-)

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