HT: Trevin Wax

HT: JT

So, we turn to the inimitable Dickens in A Christmas Carol and this story that is a song that resonates with our souls.

Marley was dead: to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.  Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.  Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind!  I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail.  I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for.  You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead?  Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?

And the conclusion:

Scrooge was better than his word.  He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father.  He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.  Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.  His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!

God bless us, every one. Merry Christmas.  Christ is King.

HT: Kevin DeYoung

When my parents first started farming, my dad had a second job, so at 8 years old I was responsible for taking care of the animals in the evenings. It was especially hard during short winter days. I can still feel the cold, dark evenings, my boots crunching through a crust on the snow, the wind cutting into my face and wire bucket handles digging into my fingers.

In my mind I can still walk the same path.  I would bundle up and waddle like the Michelin man, out of our farm house, down through our lots, alongside our moon lit corn crib, climb the fence, and slip into our barn.  It was cold and even scary outside, but, once I stepped in the barn it was a different world. You probably think of pigs as dirty, but in a farrowing house where sows are having little pigs there are clean rows of sows with litters of pigs the size of puppies. Each sow had a separate crate and the pigs would lay in little pink piles of ears and tails under their heat lamps.

Our pigs ate (and did other things) 365 days a year, so we did chores, even on Christmas Eve.

When I think about cold winter evenings and warm barns full of straw, watching over our flocks by night, and my very ordinary childhood and life, it means more that the Angel of the Lord appeared to shepherds and God wrote them into the Christmas story.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid (Luke 2:8-9).

We still have plenty of ordinary jobs. Maybe you will be working this week when most people are home with their families: driving a semi, ringing up groceries, or mopping a floor.  If so, savor the truth that God that wrote ordinary folks like us into the Christmas Story, “There were in those days shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night. . .”  They were doing chores.

*Repeated from 12/24/2009.

HT: Z

That’s Christmas (Short Film) HD from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.

HT: Justin Taylor

I am sorely tempted to share Douthat’s conclusion because it so concisely summarizes the question we wish to address here in Stillman Valley.  But, I’ll make you click through to read it. Douthat deserves the traffic.

Christmas is hard for everyone. But it’s particularly hard for people who actually believe in it.

In a sense, of course, there’s no better time to be a Christian than the first 25 days of December. But this is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack. Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism. And the once-a-year churchgoers crowding the pews beside them are a reminder of how many Americans regard religion as just another form of midwinter entertainment, wedged in between “The Nutcracker” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”

These anxieties can be overdrawn, and they’re frequently turned to cynical purposes. (Think of the annual “war on Christmas” drumbeat, or last week’s complaints from Republican senators about the supposed “sacrilege” of keeping Congress in session through the holiday.) But they also reflect the peculiar and complicated status of Christian faith in American life.

Read the rest here.

HT: Denny Burk