A Very Bright and Merry and Most Blessed Christmas to Everyone!
A vivid European folk tale comes to life in Olivia Armstrong and Mira Miroslavova’s lovely Christmas story. We all know of the gifts of the three wise men, but The Birds of Christmas asks: What if all of creation longed to celebrate the coming of Christ, offering whatever gifts it could to this precious child?
Carol of the Birds ( El Cant Dels Ocells )
"The Carol of the Birds" is a traditional Catalonian carol called "El Cant Dels Ocells." A version of this carol, arranged forchoir, piano, and cello, is available from GIA.
Candlelight, carols and chalk blessings shape Christmas across Eastern Europe
Receiving a chalk blessing at the doorway or decorating wooden boats instead of Christmas trees may seem unfamiliar to many outside the region. Yet across Eastern and Central Europe, Christmas is still marked by traditions shaped by faith, memory and shared life — customs that quietly anchor the season in meaning and community.
The Forgotten Holiday Called ‘Old Christmas’
Because of the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in the 1500s, Christmas ended up being celebrated 11 days earlier than before. When the change reached America in the 1750s, some people continued to observe December 25 as sacred and also marked January 6 as “Old Christmas.” This tradition held on strongly in Appalachia and remained part of Kentucky’s holiday heritage as a parallel celebration alongside the newer Christmas date.
Cherry Tree Carol
A complete version of The Cherry Tree Carol.
This Mischief of Mice Preserves a Cathedral
Meet a mischief of mice that is not nibbling away at the foundation of an old building. Rather, these mice have made a contribution for more than six decades by raising the funds needed for the maintenance of a 150-year-old Episcopal cathedral in the upper Midwest.
Since 1962, volunteers known as Cathedral Mice have produced a different handmade mouse each year. At $20 a mouse, the sales add up. At about 2,500 mice a year, the profits have covered the hefty maintenance costs and capital campaigns for St. Paul’s Cathedral in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
A brief history of Christmas bans
These days, Christmas is hard to miss and nearly impossible to avoid. But at various times it has been banned in different countries, including Britain. This is the story.....
Marginalising the Messiah
We’re too familiar with the Christmas story. It doesn’t surprise and challenge us enough. We’re used to thinking of Joseph and the heavily pregnant Mary being turned away by a grumpy innkeeper who relegates them to an animal barn. But recent historical research has given us a better understanding of what actually happened. They were indeed marginalised and ignored. But not by a businessman bent on profit. By their own family.
7 symbolic details we often miss about Jesus’ birth
When we think of Christmas, the nativity scene usually comes to mind. And most of us can picture the scene instantly — Mary and Joseph, a manger, shepherds, angels, and a bright star overhead. Maybe you even played one of the characters as a child. It’s a story we know so well that we sometimes overlook the depth, beauty, and unexpected details woven into it.
Yet the birth of Jesus is full of quiet surprises. Layered beneath the familiar narrative are cultural, historical, and theological details that reveal just how intentional God was in sending His Son into the world.
A Christmas Sermon 1,700 Years Old (From St. Gregory of Nazianzus)
Celebrate this Christmas with those believers who have gone before us. Here is a Christmas Sermon from St. Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 380).
Keep Christ in Christmas? First, keep Christ in Christian
Empathy is not a soft substitute for holiness; it is the pulse of the Christian, and the Christmas story.
William Tyndale and the 500th anniversary of the Christmas story in English This Christmas is the 500th anniversary of when ordinary men and women could first hear the Christmas story being read from print in plain English. This is the story....
What if Charles Wesley Had Written Joy to the World?
Charles Wesley doesn’t need anybody to stick up for him when it comes to Christmas songs: The man gave us "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," after all. And if you add the Advent song "Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus" and a bunch of less famous but altogether worthy ones in the collection Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord, he’s got an impressive seasonal footprint.
Thoroughly Converted: Enslaving the Inner Man for the Glory of Christ
Walter Hooper, the literary advisor of C.S. Lewis’s vast estate after his death and, more importantly, a close friend of his, once described Lewis as “the most thoroughly converted man [he] ever met.” He expands upon this reflection by saying that Lewis’s “whole vision of life was such that the natural and the supernatural seemed inseparably combined.”
Organisers of Christmas evangelistic campaign thrilled with impact
Organisers of this year's Shine Your Light Christmas evangelistic outreach have been "overwhelmed" by the response from local churches.
They said that over 3 million people were reached through church events that took place from 12 to 14 December across the four nations of the UK, plus Ireland.
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