Christmas Without Santa

I'm not sure anyone can experience what Christmas really means without confronting that sense of lost innocence and the potential for disillusionment ...

Innkeepers for Today

If all Christians did something extra for just one person this Christmas, don't you think that the holiday would be much nicer, more memorable, and ...

No Creche in Our Lives

Many of us have found our sensitivities insulted and our convictions offended as court rulings removed the creches from the lawns of our city halls. It's ...

The First Nativity Scene

In 1224, inspired by the sight of shepherds tending their flocks in the moonlight, St. Francis of Assisi asked a wealthy friend from Greccio, Italy, to ...

Christ Became One of Us

John Howard Griffin was a white man who believed he could never understand the plight of African-Americans unless he became like one. In 1959, he darkened ...

Inoffensive Celebration

To avoid offending anybody, the schools dropped religion altogether and started singing about the weather. At my son's school, they now hold the winter ...

A Christmas Revolution

It was on Christmas Eve, after a Romanian church had gathered for candlelight service, that the Communist soldiers came to take the pastor. The people ...

Newborn Babe

What a paradox that a babe in a manger should be called mighty! Yet even as a baby, Jesus Christ revealed power. His birth affected the heavens as that ...

We Are Shepherds

I read about a little boy who was in his first Christmas pageant. He was 5. He was one of the shepherds--you know, they wear their bathrobes and their ...

The Mysterious Incarnation

In this poem written some 15 centuries ago, Augustine tried to capture the mystery of the Incarnation:

Maker of the sun,

He is made under the sun.

In the ...