War on Christmas

The war on Christmas is real, shows a squidoo site in the Catholic group. For now, this page shows that the war on Christmas is primarily verbal, with some mockery and even vandalism thrown in, but indeed, there are those who want to remove Christmas from our society in its Christian form. Example after excellent example demonstrates that it is NOT a figment of anyone's imagination: the war on Christmas is REAL.

One young woman, the Valedictorian of her class, was cut off in the middle of her speech. The speech was vetted by school administration prior to the event, with warnings. They had cut all the most important Christian references from it before she even arrived at the podium.

It is one of the instances where the snake is showing his tail, where in an institution of higher learning, the rights of the free speech drummed into the heads of all students, is abridged right at the peak moment of a student's achievement.

But the importance of the attack is clear: upon the very rights of speech guaranteed in our Constitution, Christians themselves are being silenced, by the power of the politically correct, whereas anyone espousing any view damaging to society or families is heralded as 'forward thinking.'

As Europe has gone, so America is headed: you can say anything you want, as long as it is one thing, about one agenda, about one viewpoint.

Indeed, as in Europe, it isn't only Christmas that is under siege, it is Christianity itself.

The Challenge of Re-Living Catholic

What makes some people step into life, living, understanding and being catholic, and others dropping such an inheritance? Of those who abandon their faith, at least for a time, what help made that change possible? An article today suggests that grandparents may make all the difference.

Somehow throughout my life, the Christmas season has become a season of peculiarly acute spiritual poverty for me. Gift giving is not much of a joy, excepting the rare oppportunity where I can give a gift of meaning rather than indulgence. There is no joy in shopping, no joy in decorating, indeed, no joy in a tree any longer. Family stresses, losses, and so forth, all contribute to this internal spiritual poverty.

Perhaps that's very appropriate for the Advent season. After many millennia of the pronounced absence of the living God, (a severe poverty of spirit), finally souls knew He was arriving- Emmanuel. A bright star of hope in a race exiled from the glorious universe. Spiritual poverty is, indeed, appropriate.

The bright star of Christmas past is my Grandmother. Somehow deep in my soul she still remains, playing Christmas piano while we gathered round singing, a simple evergreen with subdued lights and gently twinkling tinsel, homemade cookies and hand knitted mittens. Midnight Mass. Candles and song. Deep, deeply silent snow.

Inexplicably in those too-few experiences, Christmas lives within me even now. In some mysterious way, a cornerstone was laid in my soul, dusty from abandon all those years, true, but a foundation just the same. In those few short moments I knew I was important to my grandmother; I knew my soul meant so much to her. She didn't speak it, she wasn't much of a talker, at least to me. She gave it through the place I held in her heart. Its the one gift that still gives, that makes all the difference.