ALAN writes:

To a little boy growing up in that decade, it seemed that Christmas was the high point of each year.  The sights and sounds and texture of those Christmases are kept in the deepest and darkest vault of my memories.  It never was the toys or gifts I received that lingered years afterward in memory.  It was something apart from those:  The spirit of those days around Christmas, a palpable spirit of good cheer, confidence, and expectation; the extended family and friends who came to visit; their company and conversation, punctuated every so often by laughter or the silence of remembering Christmases years before; and how the home in which I was fortunate to grow up became illuminated every Christmas by such people and the sound of their voices, the lights and colors of Christmas, and the soothing, inspirational sounds of Christmas Carols and music.

Such days and those people are alive to me again whenever I review the dozens of color slides that my mother took on such occasions.  Here are a few of them: (more…)

EVERY SINGLE massacre in the news should be considered — if considered at all — with detachment and skepticism, especially highly-charged events that tug at the heartstrings and are relentlessly publicized. There is too much evidence of past staging to take anything for granted. To that end, Winter Watch recently examined the alleged SUV attack which killed six people in Waukesha, Wisconsin last month. This time there may not have even been crisis actors. It may have involved just computer-generated imagery. (See the video discussion.) (more…)

[Reposted]

CHRISTMAS, they say, is about the Incarnation of God — the mysterious, improbable and incomprehensible birth of God Himself as a human baby in a single moment of history.

But if you think about it for a minute or two, if you just think about it, you realize that if this is true then, well, Christmas must be about everything.

Christmas couldn’t just be about Christmas.

It couldn’t be just about a holiday with decorated trees and lights and carols and gifts. It couldn’t be just about Christmas prayers, as sublime and essential as they may be in their highest and most exalted manifestation, the ancient Christ Mass. It couldn’t possibly be just about these things.

No, Christmas must be, if it is what they say it is and if it was what they say it was, it must be about everything. Every single thing. Every single person. Every single moment. Every single place. Every single thought. Every single event.

Haven’t you sensed that already?

Haven’t you sensed on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day that something deeply personal was happening — something that was strangely and mysteriously about you? 

Well, even if you haven’t sensed that, it was. It had to be about you. And everyone who has ever lived.

It couldn’t just be this one divine Baby — it must be about every baby. It must be about people who have long since ceased to resemble the babies they once were.

It couldn’t just be about Bethlehem. It must be about San Francisco. It must be about Hong Kong and Moscow and — what’s that city in Saudi Arabia — Riyadh. It must be about Tulsa and Marseilles.

It couldn’t just be about the donkey Mary rode along those dirt roads. It must be about all donkeys and also all modes of transportation, including planes lifting off right this minute from teeming airports, freight trucks roaring down superhighways and baby strollers with their unpredictable passengers, adorable to be sure but not as holy as Jesus. (more…)

ZENO writes:

I am here right now in a very unfree country, with “vaccine passports” required to go almost everywhere, closed cultural spaces, canceled Christmas events, the threat of a new lockdown, and the debate about mandating experimental drugs on everyone including children. (more…)

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PENNY writes:

In your response to “Your Car’s Ready” you made this comment: “I doubt she would want to be a housewife. Nothing in her life would have prepared her for anything like that.” It brought to mind something the certified lay speaker (a young woman) said in the message in my church this past Sunday.

It was to the effect that when the Angel greeted Mary with “Hail, Favored One” Mary would have been thinking “How am I favored? I’m only fourteen and have nothing to look forward to in life but being married to Joseph, having his children, washing clothes in the stream and beating them with rocks. I’m not a princess.” (more…)

FROM Winter Watch:

Every man, woman and child in America is owed $65,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), according to a report published earlier this year by Michigan State University professor and economist Mark Skidmore. (more…)

MY husband and I went for a walk last night in the winter darkness. Many houses in the neighborhood were decorated with ropes of Christmas lights, as I'm sure they were where you live. On one house, the roof of a second-floor addition was lighted up and we wondered how the elderly man who lives there got the lights so high. He must have hired someone to do it. People go to extraordinary lengths and expense to hang lights. I know of one man who got up on the roof and ... well, maybe it wasn't worth it. These artificial lights are often festive and cheerful. But they are only outer lights -- inferior to the inner lights which appear one by one in the night of Advent. They glimmer and brighten as Christmas approaches. In the blackest black, in the dark so dark, beautiful balls of fire dangle from the roof of the soul. They illuminate lonely highways and byways. Seen, but unseen. Exert, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power and come, succour us by thy great might: that by the assistance of thy grace, thy indulgent mercy may hasten what is delayed by our sins: who livest and reignest God, world without end. [Collect from the Fourth Sunday of Advent]  

THAT super-scary “Patriot Front” march in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago was some of the most poorly-executed political theater I have ever seen in the news. The blogger Banned Hipster comments:

I’m guessing that Patriot Front will be holding a lot more demonstrations as the mid-term elections heat up. The Democrats have nothing to run on except for mandatory medical malpractice for children and Permanent Covid Lockdown.

So having a Cartoon Nazi group to run against makes it much easier. (more…)

A GREAT recording by Chanticleer of Franz Biebl's Ave Maria  can be found here.