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Our Favorite Christmas Movies (Podcast)
Read more: Our Favorite Christmas Movies (Podcast)In this episode, we talk about our favorite Christmas movies. We give some nods to Christmas classics as well as more than a few surprises. Listen and see if your favorites end up on each of our top five Christmas films lists! Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Rev. Dr. Nathaniel…
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A Christmas Reflection
Read more: A Christmas ReflectionPhoto Credit: “Nativity” by jeffweese is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Christmas and the Christmas tradition can trigger a host of emotions and memories for nearly everyone who lives in our country. Whether it’s the decorations in the neighborhood, the familiar holiday music on the radio, or the fact that nearly everything shuts down on Christmas Day, it’s…
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No Room in the Inn? (Re-post)
Read more: No Room in the Inn? (Re-post)Everyone knows how the Christmas story goes. As Stanley Hudson vehemently asserted in the most recent episode of The Office (8.10 Christmas Wishes) regarding the sensitivity to celebrate everything but Christmas during the Holidays: I want Christmas! Just give me plain-baby-Jesus-lying-in-a-manger Christmas! When our culture boils down the Christmas event it looks like this: baby Jesus in a manger. We’ve seen…
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Asking More of the Right Questions This Christmas
Read more: Asking More of the Right Questions This ChristmasWe’re Getting Christmas Wrong Over the past few Christmases, I’m noticing an uptick in blog posts and essays about how Christians are “getting Christmas wrong,” that our old quaint stories about Jesus being born in an animal stable are historically implausible, and that our hymns and advent traditions are being “spoiled” by eminent historians who…
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Harry Potter & Epiphany
Read more: Harry Potter & EpiphanyLast week we celebrated Christmas, and later this week we’ll be celebrating Epiphany. Although you wouldn’t know it from the way that Christmas is typically celebrated in America – beginning sometime in November and culminating on December 25th – Christmas is a 12 day celebration (hence the famous song). Christmas (in the West) officially ends…
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Dickens, Death, and the Christian Christmas
Read more: Dickens, Death, and the Christian ChristmasThis week, a woman at my church faces the harrowing decision between two Christmases. On the one hand, she could join a few friends and the son from which she has been estranged, risking the possibility of running into the guy who things “didn’t work out with.” It would be too uncomfortable for her to ask…
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On Contentment and Simplicity: An Advent Reflection
Read more: On Contentment and Simplicity: An Advent ReflectionEnough for him whom cherubim, Worship night and day, A breastful of milk, And a mangerful of hay; Enough for him whom angels Fall down before, The ox and ass and camel, Which adore (A Christmas Carol, Christina Rossetti) It’s hard to imagine the King of the universe, the Word of God through which everything has been…
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Advent and Jerusalem
Read more: Advent and JerusalemO come! O come! Emmanuel! And ransom captive Israel; That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Advent is a time of mournful waiting. Participants in this season undergo a theatrical embodiment of the struggles of the people of God. In this drama, the Church relives, in a sense, a time…
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The Apocalypse of Santa Claus
Read more: The Apocalypse of Santa ClausAs a scholar of the decades preceding the Great Outage of 2059, I am always intrigued when a “paper” document of such tremendous historical and cultural influence surfaces from the clutter of the past. Rumors of the cultic devotion attributed to pagan deity Santa Claus have circulated through academic circles for years. However, it wasn’t…
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Advent, Betrothal, and a whole lot of waiting
Read more: Advent, Betrothal, and a whole lot of waitingFor those who don’t know, I am getting married in about 30 days from now. The prospect of this fills me with such joy, primarily because my wife-to-be is my best friend and someone I choose not to live without. There will be so many practical benefits to our marriage: Cutting commute time in half,…