2 of 14

Advent and Christmas:

• The season of Advent invites quiet reflection | For some Christians, the days between Thanksgiving and Dec. 25 are a time for spiritual contemplation, not shopping (Los Angeles Times)
  
  
• Spirit of Advent | Christians prepare for Christ's birth and Second Coming with books, ceremonies and personal reflection during the season of Advent (The Wichita Eagle)
  
  
• Counting the days | 19th-century Advent tradition kept alive today (Courier & Press, Ky.)
  
  
• Keeping Christmas | Why participate any longer in this charade where the focal point of worship has shifted from a babe in a manger to a babe in the Victoria's Secret window? (Cal Thomas, The Washington Times)
  
  
• The steel meaning of Christmas | What does a mill town do when it loses its mill? In Bethlehem, Pa., they just turn up the tinsel (The Washington Post)
  
  
• Christmas is more than religion | Those who bemoan the holiday's commercialization should take a historical view (Clarke Thomas, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
  
  
• Shopping center puts price tag on Jesus | The Oslo City shopping mall has started a campaign to spur Christmas buying that they say reminds consumers of what the holiday meant, and what it has become. But plenty of people find the promotion - a large banner depicting Jesus Christ with a CD as a halo and a price tag over his head—tasteless (Aftenposten, Oslo, Norway)
  
  
• Tips on balancing sacredness of season with holiday chaos | How to balance the sacred meaning of the holiday with the secular headaches of long lines, searching for parking spaces and sold-out gifts is never easy (The Tennessean, Nashville)
  
  

Thanksgiving:

• Are churches too skittish to address gluttony? | The disconnect between food and spirituality, some people of faith say, is never more poignant than at Thanksgiving—America's gorge-fest. Families gobble, gobble, gobble to their heart's desire, treating their bodies as objects for overindulgence rather than sacred temples. (Dallas Morning News)
  
  
• Pilgrims, No thanks in Mohawk Country | Pilgrims? Mrs. King's first graders looked blank when asked by a visitor. Pilgrims? (The New York Times)
  
  
• The un-Pilgrims | This is the region that historians now see as the birthplace of religious pluralism in America: as the origin of the melting pot (Russell Shorto, The New York Times)
  
  
• A case of hit and myth | The Pilgrims were not warm and loving freedom seekers. They were intolerant people (Margaret Finnegan, Los Angeles Times)
  
  
• Forgiving can add to joy of holiday dinner | The best offering for the Thanksgiving table doesn't come from the oven (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
  
  
• Praise heaven, religion's still free | Because they risked danger and death in a faraway land for the chance to worship as they saw fit, freed of government interference, the Pilgrims have become symbols of our commitment to religious liberty (Editorial, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
  
  

Bible:

• Bible says no to gay unions, but it says a lot of things | Many old laws have lost their force - we don't kill smart-alecky kids (The Dallas Morning News)
  
  
• Bible gets girly makeover | To some, Revolve is innovative, awesome and valuable. To others is it vapid, reactionary and abhorrent. In reality it is both (Eleanor J. Bader, In These Times)
  
  
• Also: God, for girls | A new Bible comes on like a teen 'zine (Newsday)
  
  

Jesus:

• How would Jesus be? | 13 questions about the man, his teachings and the way the world celebrates him (The State, Columbia, S.C.)
  
  

next page... |  2 of 14

share this page

December (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47