A Merry Christmas to all my readers!
We are spending Christmas in Hawaii with family that has been scattered to all the corners of the earth.
Here are some of my grandchildren:
Mele Kalikimaka!
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Category Archives: Christmas
Merry Christmas!
A Merry Christmas to all.
A few carols, arranged for guitar by John W Duarte, played by yours truly.
Silent Night:
The First Nowell:
Once in Royal David’s City:
Hark, the Herald Angels Sing:
Away in a Manger:
O Come, all Ye Faithful:
While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night:
See Amid the Winter’s Snow:
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A Fred Hiltz Christmas
In his Christmas message, Fred Hiltz tells us that “as I read the Christmas story, I am always taken by the way we portray the innkeeper”, an odd fascination for an archbishop, since in the Biblical account of Christmas, there is no mention of an innkeeper. Still, the important thing about Christmas isn’t that it is an event of cosmic significance around which all history pivots, because God himself entered time as a baby, but that Canada must accept more Syrian migrants.
And for that we need an innkeeper.
The other problem is that Hiltz completely forgets about the little drummer boy.
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And now for something completely different
An Anglican Archbishop whose Christmas message is the Gospel:
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O Magnum Mysterium
O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!
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St. James Anglican Church in London builds replica Bethlehem wall to celebrate Christmas
Here is another example of the church using Christmas as an excuse to preach one-sided political tendentiousness rather than the Gospel:
More here and here, where you will find no mention of the fact that the wall exists to protect Israeli families from fanatical Islamist terrorists.
It does say:
The most unhelpful thing you can do is be pro one side; it just adds to the conflict.
By its own measure, St. James has just added to the conflict.
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Merry Christmas!
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
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Christmas according to Fred Hiltz
It’s all about the UN Millennium goals, and speaking up for – not, you will note, directly helping, a task too difficult for today’s enervated mainline denominations – the poor.
Instead of celebrating the most important event in the universe’s history, the arrival of the Incarnate God, born of a Virgin, sinless, sacrificed for us and our only means of reconciliation with the Father, we have prosaic, idolatrous utopianism. A religion emptied of transcendence.
From here:
With Christmas approaching, Archbishop Fred Hiltz today urged Anglicans, via a CBC radio interview, to think about the poor and disadvantaged, saying the church “must be in the world and for the world” as Jesus Christ was.
In the gospels, “we see quite clearly that he [Jesus] cared as much for people’s physical well-being as their spiritual well-being,” Hiltz said when asked by CBC Toronto Metro Morning’s Matt Galloway about why he’s asking Anglicans to become stronger advocates for social justice. “The church has a moral obligation, rooted in the gospel and in the teaching of the prophets long before Jesus. We have a moral obligation…to speak up for those who are disadvantaged, for the poor and for the downtrodden.”
[….]
Hiltz noted that eliminating extreme hunger and poverty was one of the UN Millennium goals (to which Anglicans worldwide have been asking their governments to demonstrate commitment).
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Christmas lights
A house in Burlington, Ontario. Click on an image to see a bigger version.
The home-owner’s son was killed in a motorcycle accident; the motorcycle is dedicated to him:
