“A Christmas Carol isn’t just a cheery, uplifting tale that we can mimic in various modern ways,” says Mayhew. “It’s a very seriously intended work of moral fiction and, perhaps because we tend to pigeonhole it as a Christmas story, we don’t read just how serious it is.”

The message that Dickens had for Victorian Britain is increasingly pertinent, even though we may use different words to describe similar problems, [Professor Robert] Mayhew believes.

“It’s interesting because we’re living right now with unprecedented levels of homelessness and individuals needing the support of food banks. We have the binary between extreme wealth on one hand and those inured to poverty on the other.” You feel the resonance of A Christmas Carol seems to get stronger every year.”

Read it all.

“People were terrified of overpopulation, especially among the poor, and they believed that if people brought children into the world that they couldn’t afford to keep, they were almost committing a crime. This is what Dickens hated, this attitude.” https://t.co/zrv0C8j0MC

— Karen Swallow Prior (Notorious KSP) (@KSPrior) December 28, 2021

What was the most surprising thing you discovered in your research of St. Thomas?

That Thomas is a much more complicated man than often portrayed in secular and religious histories – infuriating, reckless, and yet calculating and even wise. In terms of his personality, he could be distant, officious. I was surprised at how few people loved him in life. Many respected and admired him, but it is said that only three people were known to have loved him: his mother, Henry II and Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, his mentor. Thomas is known to have loved his mother, Henry II and Henry’s son, Henry, whom he educated in his house and considered a son. Thanks to the devotion which has built up in the centuries, Thomas was and is much loved by so many, but it is heart-breaking to think that he may not have had the experience of warm human relationships and may have meant he experienced great loneliness. But then, that may have been another reason for him to find refuge in God.

What do you think is the particular holiness of this saint?

If we had known Thomas in his time, we probably would not speak of his holiness. Those who knew him would not have considered him a Saint at all; it was his death that changed people’s view of him. But he had been growing in holiness, little by little. We could say that he was a man who, for all his public persona, was “hidden with Christ in God”, as he struggled to become a better man and a good bishop. He persisted, quietly and often painfully, giving himself to God in prayer and penance, consciously aware of his mistakes and pride.

His desire to be a good bishop came from his sense of duty; in the end, that sense of duty led him to realize that only the sacrifice of his life could bring peace. And he was prepared to offer that sacrifice. Thomas’ particular holiness was the hidden, daily struggle to be what Christ wanted him to be, and that drama was at the heart of the long journey from a man of ambition, an ordinary, decent Catholic, to a man prepared to die for Christ and the Church.

Read it all.

St. Thomas Becket — A Saint for This Season?| National Catholic Register https://t.co/NAHoaS4z3W

— Fr John S. Hogan, ocds (@jshocds) December 29, 2021

I wonder if the popularity of the Coventry Carol today indicates that it expresses something people don’t find in the usual run of joyful Christmas carols – this song of grief, of innocence cruelly destroyed. The Feast of the Holy Innocents (Childermas, as it was known in the Middle Ages) is not an easy subject for a modern audience to understand, and the images which often accompany it in medieval manuscripts, of children impaled on spears, are truly horrible. But they are meant to be; they are intended to disgust and horrify, and they’re horrible because they’re not fantasy violence but all too close to the reality of the world we live in. Children do die; the innocent and vulnerable do suffer at the hands of the powerful; and as this carol says, every single form of human love, one way or another, will ultimately end in parting and grief. Every child born into the world – every tiny, innocent, adorable little baby – however loved, however cared for, will grow up to face some kind of sorrow, and the inevitability of death. Of course no one wants to think about such things, especially when they look at a newborn baby; but pretending otherwise, not wanting to think otherwise, doesn’t make it any less true.

Medieval writers were honest and clear-eyed about such uncomfortable truths. The idea that thoughts like these are incongruous with the Christmas season (as you often hear people say about the Holy Innocents) is largely a modern scruple, encouraged by the comparatively recent idea that Christmas is primarily a cheery festival for happy children and families.

Read it all.

Today is Childermas Day, the feast of the Holy Innocents, on the fourth day of Christmas. It's an appropriate day for the Coventry Carol and other medieval lullaby-laments, which give voice to the grief that lies near the heart of the Christmas season: https://t.co/KYr5ltY2ou pic.twitter.com/aJgD0oKW4H

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) December 28, 2021

Lyrics:

Lullay, thou little tiny child
Sleep well, lully, lullay
And smile in dreaming, little one
Sleep well, lully, lullay
Oh sisters two, what may we do
To preserve on this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing
Sleep well, lully, lullay
Farewell, lully, lullay
Herod the king in his raging
Set forth upon this day
By his decree, no life spare thee
All children young to slay
All children young to slay
Then woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and say
For thy parting, neither say nor sing
Farewell, lully, lullay
Farewell, lully, lullay
And when the stars fill darkened skies
In their far venture, stay
And smile as dreaming, little one
Farewell, lully, lullay
Dream now, lully, lullay

From here:

A tiny child is born, who is a great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. When they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come.
Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children.
You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. You imagine that if you accomplish your desire you can prolong your own life, though you are seeking to kill Life himself.
Yet your throne is threatened by the source of grace, so small, yet so great, who is lying in the manger. He is using you, all unaware of it, to work out his own purposes freeing souls from captivity to the devil. He has taken up the sons of the enemy into the ranks of God’s adopted children.
The children die for Christ, though they do not know it. The parents mourn for the death of martyrs. The child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to himself. See the kind of kingdom that is his, coming as he did in order to be this kind of king. See how the deliverer is already working deliverance, the saviour already working salvation.
But you, Herod, do not know this and are disturbed and furious. While you vent your fury against the child, you are already paying him homage, and do not know it.
How great a gift of grace is here! To what merits of their own do the children owe this kind of victory? They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ. They cannot use their limbs to engage in battle, yet already they bear off the palm of victory.

Today is the feast of The Holy Innocents. Matthew’s gospel begins and ends with the brutal violence of the powerful against the innocent when they see some threat to their order. The violence that Jesus forgives and releases us from when we’re open to his Spirit. #holyinnocents pic.twitter.com/IrOPbirkJX

— Raymond Friel (@friel_raymond) December 28, 2021

We remember this day, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by the order of King Herod. Receive, we beseech thee, into the arms of thy mercy all innocent victims; and by thy great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish thy rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. We meditate not only on the violence Herod perpetrated against the young children, but also how our own culture participates in violence against the weak.

Lord, have mercy upon us. pic.twitter.com/KdEQiyBElN

— Wesley Walker 🕯 (@WesleyWalker4) December 28, 2021

Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time
and of time,
A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:
transecting, bisecting the world of time,
a moment in time but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time but time was made through that moment:
for without the meaning there is no time,
and that moment of time gave the meaning.

—T.S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock”, VII, as found for example there (page 107).

Painting originally owned by Mme de Pompadour and displayed at her Chateau de Bellevue: "La Lumiere du Monde" or The Light of the World. This wonderful altarpiece was painted in 1750 by Francois Boucher and is now kept in the Musee de Beaux Arts in Lyons. pic.twitter.com/FXVWtG7ksj

— Maria SarfatiChiprut (@jsarfatichiprut) March 24, 2019

I have a friend who teaches in the upper peninsula in Michigan. He has one of those schools that run from kindergarten all the way up through eighth grade, including special ed. One of his students was intellectually slow, couldn’t do very well in classes. And when Christmas Pageant time came he wanted to have a part in the Pageant. What’s more, he wanted a speaking part. He wouldn’t settle for anything less.

So they made into the innkeeper. They figured he could handle that because all he had to do was say, “No room,” twice: once before Mary spoke, once after she spoke. The night of the Pageant, Mary knocks on the door he opens the door, and he says in a brusque fashion, “No room!” Mary says, “But I’m sick, and I’m cold, and I’m going to have a baby, and if you don’t give me a place to sleep, my baby will be born in the cold, cold night.”

He just stood there. The boy behind him nudged him and said, “No room, No room, say, “No room.’” And finally, he turned and he said, “I know what I’m supposed to say, but she can have my room.”

–Anthony Campolo in William H. Willimon Ed, Sermons from Duke Chapel: Voices from “A Great Towering Church” (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), p.294; used by yours truly in the Christmas Eve sermon

The Adoration of the Shepherds
shortly after 1450
Andrea Mantegna

(Met Museum) pic.twitter.com/cxaCAggQtU

— John McCafferty (@jdmccafferty) December 28, 2021

Twas much,
that man was
made like God before,
But that God should
be like man
much more

–John Donne (1572-1631)

El Greco, The Nativity (1603-05) pic.twitter.com/ZqvrVaAeMP

— Jane Tim (@JaneTim8) December 25, 2021

Arrival of some eager shepherds. Lifting their hats, as shepherds will do. Ukrainian icon, 17th century. #BoxingDay pic.twitter.com/S2K2AKj8pT

— Dr. Peter Paul Rubens (@PP_Rubens) December 26, 2021

She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.

She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof.
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars.
The baby was God.

And she jumped in the air
whirled around, dove into the sofa
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.

–John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected; one of my favourite Christmas poems, it was used in my Christmas Eve sermon

Carlo Maratta 🇮🇹 (1625-1713)
"The Nativity"
c. 1650s pic.twitter.com/NCTdHabHO6

— Dionisio Olavarrieta (@djolavarrieta) January 4, 2021

People across the world are celebrating Christmas – one of the holiest times in the Christian calendar. However, for the second year in a row, there are smaller crowds at church services and other events because of the continuing coronavirus outbreak. Here’s our snapshot of global festivities….

Take the time to go though them all.

Some wonderful photographs in @BBCWorld's “In pictures: World celebrates Christmas”, but this one from Bethlehem has the feel of a Rembrandt painting https://t.co/m9hJHUEZ1W pic.twitter.com/p9qCF5Gdiw

— Mark Pullinger (@larkingrumple) December 25, 2021

And for me and my family, even with one familiar laugh missing this year, there will be joy in Christmas, as we have the chance to reminisce, and see anew the wonder of the festive season through the eyes of our young children, of whom we were delighted to welcome four more this year.

They teach us all a lesson – just as the Christmas story does – that in the birth of a child, there is a new dawn with endless potential.

It is this simplicity of the Christmas story that makes it so universally appealing: simple happenings that formed the starting point of the life of Jesus — a man whose teachings have been handed down from generation to generation, and have been the bedrock of my faith. His birth marked a new beginning. As the carol says, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas.

Read it all.

📺🎄The Queen's annual Christmas Message can be viewed at 3pm on @RoyalFamily channels, @BBCOne and @ITV and heard on @BBCRadio4.

Her Majesty's Christmas Broadcast will also be available via Amazon’s Alexa devices.

Merry Christmas! pic.twitter.com/kE90FdsMx3

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) December 25, 2021

She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.

She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof.
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars.
The baby was God.

And she jumped in the air
whirled around, dove into the sofa
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.

–John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected

That’s all for this Nativity edition of Art Wednesday. Have a great Christmas. Remember, hope has come. Glory to God in the highest. #ArtWednesday #Nativity #Rembrandt pic.twitter.com/kxqUaXQeOk

— Russ Ramsey 🫀 (@russramsey) December 23, 2021

We are going to take a break from the Anglican, Religious, Financial, Cultural, and other news until later in the Christmas season to focus from this evening forward on the great miracle of the Incarnation–KSH.

Wherever you are and whoever you are, you are welcome and invited this Christmas to worship the child, the God, whose heart beats for you. #ChristmasEve #AtTheHeartOfChristmas

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) December 24, 2021

As the Dalai Lama says and as the Christmas story conveys, there is a lot of warm-hearted understanding and forgiveness needed. A lot of more honest conversations which acknowledge our mistakes and offer new beginnings. A lot of choosing to heal and of choosing not to do any further harm.

May this Christmas lift our spirits for this important work that lies ahead.

Read it all.

The Christmas story evokes a warm-heartedness the world needs https://t.co/nZ2mr6e2So

— BishopPhilip Huggins (@PHUGGINS4) December 23, 2021

someone has been waiting since 8th grade to use this line pic.twitter.com/Uia16KDpDt

— Laura Lorson (@prairielaura) December 23, 2021

Make sure to read all the replies.

‘Dimitri Dunn is one of the nearly 25,000 kids poised to age out of the foster care system. NBC News’ Cynthia McFadden has an in-depth look at the challenges they face and speaks with Franco Vega, the founder and CEO of the Right Way Foundation, about his mission to support those in need of assistance.’ Watch it all–great reporting.

2. COVID-19 Vaccines Arrive as the Virus Mutates. The vaccines created to address the novel coronavirus may join the smallpox, polio, and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines as major advances in saving lives and diminishing morbidity. The speed at which COVID-19 vaccines were developed was stunning. Vaccines historically took ten to fifteen years to develop. The quickest any vaccine had been developed previously was the four years it took to create the mumps vaccine. COVID-19 vaccines were created in less than a year. Just as important, the leading COVID-19 vaccines worked stunningly well; the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both more than 90 percent effective against early COVID-19 variants. More than 7.4 billion vaccine doses were administered in 184 countries in the first eleven months of 2021, with seventy countries making donations. Unfortunately, too many people who could have been vaccinated chose not to, and too many people who wanted to get vaccinated couldn’t. That was deadly because COVID-19 is incredibly adaptive. The Delta variant, first identified in December 2020 in India, was more infectious than its predecessors and soon became the dominant strain around the world. In November 2021, South African scientists identified the emergence of the Omicron variant. Within weeks it had been found around the world. As 2021 ended, it was unclear whether Omicron presented a greater health threat or would send the global economy into another tailspin. What was clear is that more than 5 million people globally and 800,000 Americans had died from COVID-19.

1. Countries Fail the Climate Change Challenge—Again. “A code red for humanity.” That’s how UN Secretary General António Guterres’ described the UN report released in August that concluded that humanity faces catastrophic climate change unless the emission of heat-trapping gases is slashed. But one didn’t need to read the 4,000-page report to know that. Extreme weather dominated the news in 2021, as it has for much of the past decade. Record drought wracked the American southwest. Record flooding devastated Belgium and western Germany. Epic wildfires tore through Greece. Late season monsoons ravaged India and Nepal. Climate optimists could find some developments to cheer in 2021. President Biden committed the United States to rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement on his first day in office. China agreed in September to discontinue financing coal-fired power plants overseas, and Iceland opened a facility to take carbon dioxide out of the air. At the COP-26 meeting in Glasgow in November countries pledged to take steps to address climate change, including by cutting methane emissions. But pledges aren’t accomplishments. Carbon emissions jumped in 2021 as the global economy roared back to life. Even as President Biden pushed Congress to address climate change in a major infrastructure bill, he asked OPEC to increase oil production in a bid to lower gasoline prices. He was hardly the only world leader hoping to have his cake and eat it too. The transition away from fossil fuels poses difficult choices. Mother Nature, however, doesn’t give credit for degree of difficulty.

Read it all and see what you make of their choices.

.@CFR_org intern Charlotte Peterson contributed to James M. Lindsay's blog post on the "Ten Most Significant World Events in 2021" in The Water's Edge https://t.co/LhNtCPIPjj

— CFR Human Resources (@CFR_HR) December 17, 2021

In their annual Christmas messages, bishops of the Church of England speak of the end of 2021 as a time of uncertainty and anxiety but say the message of the Christmas story is needed more than ever.

The Bishop of Lichfield, Dr Michael Ipgrave, refers to weeks of uncertainty about whether some Christmas celebrations should go ahead amid concerns about spreading covid-19, at the end of “another unsettling year for the human race, and us as individuals”.

But he adds: “Every Christmas we tell again the story of … God, who loves our world so much that he chooses to come among us – not because he is obliged to, not because we have asked him to, but simply out of grace.

“We always begin with grace, and we always come back to grace, shown in the sign of Emmanuel, God with us in Jesus Christ, born as a baby among us.

“No law, no government, no power on earth can cancel the wonder of that birth.”

Read it all and there are video links provided.

Nothing can cancel the message of Christmas – bishops speak of hope amid uncertainty | The Church of England https://t.co/GUGBWW4uhX

— John Inge (@BishopWorcester) December 23, 2021

Less than 20% of the world’s population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe’s maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine.

Read it all.

'Less than 20% of the world's population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe's maize and other grains…China is maintaining its food stockpiles at a "historically high level"' #foodsecurity #Chinahttps://t.co/rWDuhAKxrv

— Jim Baird (@JimBair62221006) December 23, 2021

A famous statue at the University of Hong Kong marking the Tiananmen Square massacre was removed late on Wednesday.

The statue showed piled-up corpses to commemorate the hundreds – possibly thousands – of pro-democracy protesters killed by Chinese authorities in 1989.

It was one of the few remaining public memorials in Hong Kong commemorating the incident.

Its removal comes as Beijing has increasingly been cracking down on political dissent in Hong Kong.

The city used to be one of few places in China that allowed public commemoration of the Tiananmen Square protests – a highly sensitive topic in the country.

Read it all.

Hong Kong's Tiananmen Square statue removed https://t.co/wn3t0i1iYx

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) December 23, 2021

So what about the vaccines then? He tweeted recently that getting the booster is how you love your neighbour. Is being vaccinated a moral issue?

“I’m going to step out on thin ice here and say yes, I think it is. A lot of people won’t like that – but I think it is because it’s not about me and my rights.

“Obviously there are some who for health reasons can’t be vaccinated – but it’s not about me and my rights to choose.

“Reducing my chances of getting ill reduces my chances of infecting others. It’s very simple.”
So is it a sin – is it immoral – not to get vaccinated if you can?
“I’m not going to get lured into this because I can see this going back at me for years to come. But I would say – go and get boosted – get vaccinated. It’s how we love our neighbour”

Read it all.

Archbishop of Canterbury @JustinWelby talks of disappointment and sadness at Downing Street garden image | watch the full interview with @julie_etchhttps://t.co/yjezMlXwK7

— ITV News (@itvnews) December 21, 2021

Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide.

The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus. The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020. Very early on, Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well.

Walter Reed’s Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One on Tuesday. The new vaccine will still need to undergo phase 2 and phase 3 trials.

“We’re testing our vaccine against all the different variants, including Omicron,” Modjarrad said.

Read it all.

Still need to do Phase 2 and 3 trials, but this could completely change the game.

US Army Creates Single Vaccine Against All COVID & SARS Variants, Researchers Say https://t.co/T5q1pxyKiK via @DefenseOne

— Corin Hoggard (@corinhoggard) December 22, 2021

A soup kitchen charity hopes to “give humanity” back to homeless people by eating and talking alongside those they have prepared a three-course Christmas meal for.

Streetlytes prepared and served a traditional festive dinner – complete with Christmas presents and a festive film screening – to more than 60 people on Monday evening at St Stephen’s Church in Shepherd’s Bush, west London.

Rudi Richardson founded the charity, which provides free hot meals and basic necessities like clothing and advice, in 2007 after an encounter while he was living on the streets.

Read it all.

Soup kitchen at St Stephen’s church Shepherds Bush @dioceseoflondon hopes to ‘give humanity’ to homeless people with Christmas meal https://t.co/u6DG9RDfoI

— Janet Gough (@Gough_Janet) December 22, 2021

In the first 10 months of this year, America’s workers handed in nearly 39 million resignations, the highest number since tracking began in 2000.

Some want better jobs. Others, a better work-life balance. Still others want a complete break from the corporate grind. Almost two years into the pandemic that left millions doing their jobs from home, many Americans are rethinking their relationship with work.