To embrace the Ascension is to heave a sigh of relief, to give up the struggle to be God (and with it the inevitable despair at our constant failure), and to enjoy our status as creatures: image-bearing creatures, but creatures nonetheless.

—N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (Church of England) and writer (1948—)

Ascension Day is the perfect church holiday because the world can't steal it. The culture around us has quite ruined Christmas and Easter. Of course, the world owned Christmas as its festival for the restoration of the sun before the early Christians used it to disguise their celebration of Christ's birth. … But the world has now stolen it for its consumeristic purposes and has seized Easter ...

I confess: when my parents tried to impress on my two brothers and me the importance and the intricacies of Advent observance, I could hardly keep from rolling my eyes. In a country that spends its cold Decembers in hot pursuit of food, presents, and parties, the historical niceties of an ancient liturgical season seemed … well … irrelevant.

These days, on the other side of an evangelical ...

Retail analysts anticipate that American consumers will be more conservative in their holiday spending in 2007, due to rising food and gas prices and declining values in the housing market.

The Deloitte 2007 Annual Holiday Survey indicates that although 40 percent of Americans plan to spend less on Christmas gifts this year, they will nevertheless be buying more gifts. The average respondent anticipates ...

Once upon a time, the annual celebration of Thanksgiving was also an occasion for sober reflection….

Our nation, and its pursuit of liberty and justice for all, has always had enemies, more today than ever. But in earlier times, our nation's leaders recognized that the most dangerous enemy came from within—not traitors, anarchists, or terrorists, but the very people and government committed ...

A woman was doing her last-minute Christmas shopping at a crowded mall. She was tired of fighting the crowds. She was tired of standing in lines. She was tired of fighting her way down long aisles looking for a gift that had sold out days before.

Her arms were full of bulky packages when an elevator door opened. It was full. The occupants of the elevator grudgingly tightened ranks to allow a small ...

Janet glared disapprovingly at her husband, Al. She couldn't believe how he had just stuck his foot in his mouth, given himself away, embarrassed the both of them—and didn't even know it!

It was Easter Sunday morning, and the couple was standing at the back of the church, shaking hands with the preacher.

"You're in a rut, Reverend," said Al. "You preach about the Resurrection every time I come ...

Every December since 1992, Morrill Worcester, owner of one of the world's largest holiday wreath companies, has taken time in the midst of his busiest season to haul a truckload of wreaths to the Arlington National Cemetery. Morrill and his band of volunteers spend a day laying wreaths on the graves of over 5,000 soldiers as part of the Wreaths Across America program.

Worcester, 56, started the program ...

Christmas is not about the living God coming to tell us everything's all right. John's gospel isn't about Jesus speaking the truth and everyone saying: "Of course! Why didn't we realize it before?" It is about God shining his clear, bright torch into the darkness of our world, our lives, our hearts, our imaginations—and the darkness not comprehending it. It's about God, God as a little child, ...

God became a man for this purpose: since you, a human being, could not reach God, but you can reach other humans, you might now reach God through a man. And so the man Christ Jesus became the mediator of God and human beings.

God became a man so that following a man—something you are able to do—you might reach God, which was formerly impossible to you.

—St. Augustine