As a kid I always had some trouble understanding the business about the three wise men.  I can see why you would bring gold to a baby — but what on earth were frankincense and myrrh and why would anybody give them to a child?  I figured myrrh might have something to do with myrtle, [...]

Connections between the adult Jesus and the baby in the manger aren’t easy to make.  At first glance, the gospels don’t help much; whatever the gospel writers had in mind, producing complete biographies of Jesus wasn’t it.  Mark omits Christmas altogether, and starts with Jesus getting baptized and launching his career.  John has a short [...]

By now, the Three Kings are well on their way to Bethlehem, and the Christmas season is drawing to a close.  But the Three Kings (actually, ‘wise men’ according to Matthew’s gospel) aren’t just bringing their famous three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  They bring with them another set of questions that we have [...]

Back in the beginning of the Christmas season, I wrote about the way the gospel Christmas narratives “roll the credits” by giving genealogical tables that link Jesus to Jewish history.  In contemplating Christmas, we should never forget that the first Christmas was first and foremost a Jewish event.  Mary, Joseph, the innkeeper, the shepherds, the [...]

Greetings once again from sunny Belize.  Although I am blogging from a lovely beachside cabana with tropical breezes gently keeping the heat (and the insects) at bay as I lazily contemplate the snorkeling expedition we have planned for the afternoon, this point in the new year always reminds me of a fresh snowfall covering the [...]

Now it gets tough.  That little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying so cutely in the manger is the biggest trouble maker in world history, and the shocking claims that Christianity makes about who he is and what he means divide Christians not only from atheists and agnostics, but also splits Christians off from [...]

Yesterday I blogged about how theists and atheists are the same; we are almost all transcendentalists in the sense that almost all of us find some kind of moral, ethical and even spiritual meaning in life.  Human life amounts to more than eating and scratching, and we want to do something real with our lives.  [...]

Yesterday King Herod’s massacre of every child in Bethlehem under the age of two shocked us out of the idea that Christmas is basically a pretty holiday about presents and elves.  Christmas is serious business, at least as Christians understand it.  The birth of the baby in the manger is connected with the murder of [...]

Manger is the French word meaning “to eat”; a manger is a place where you put hay and similar things for the animals in a barn to eat. The swaddling clothes, as in ‘wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger’ were used to wrap up the limbs of newborns so [...]

It is not quite the most controversial verse in the Bible, but Luke 1:35 comes close.  Mary has just replied to the angel Gabriel’s statement that she will be the mother of the Messiah with a question of her own:  “How shall this be,” she says in the words of the King James Version, “seeing I [...]

For all the attention it gets in the world today, Christmas is not that big of a deal in the Bible.  The New Revised Standard Version that I mostly use is 1270 pages long; about one half of one percent of this text deals with the Christmas story.
(If you want to read the whole thing now, [...]

Merry Christmas and happy holiday to all!  We are having a tense morning at the ancestral Mead home today, jumping whenever the telephone rings.  There’s an old South Carolina custom that when two friends or relations greet one another on Christmas morning, the first one who says “Christmas gift!” gets to select one of the [...]

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care at the ancestral Mead mansion; and as I settle down for a long winter’s rest I am taking a break from politics and war, sort of, to do some good old fashioned Yuletide blogging.
In particular I want to blog about Christmas itself and what it means.  [...]

Merry Christmas to those who feel so inclined and Season’s Greetings to the rest!
Team Mead moves into holiday mode today; the halls are decked with holly and the wreath is on the door.
We are celebrating the season by shifting focus; on Christmas Eve and all through the twelve days of Christmas to come, I’ll be [...]