Those we've known and loved

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and days of auld lang syne?

Peggy Noonan, in 2011, on the song:

"Auld Lang Syne"—the phrase can be translated as "long, long ago," or "old long since," but I like "old times past"—is a song that asks a question, a tender little question that has to do with the nature of being alive, of being a person on a journey in the world. It not only asks, it gives an answer.

It was written, or written down, by Robert Burns, lyric poet and Bard of Scotland. In 1788 he sent a copy of the poem to the Scots Musical Museum, with the words: "The following song, an old song, of the olden times, has never been in print." Burns was interested in the culture of Scotland, and collected old folk tales and poems. He said he got this one "from an old man"—no one knows who—and wrote it down. Being a writer, Burns revised and compressed. He found the phrase auld lang syne "exceedingly expressive" and thought whoever first wrote the poem "heaven inspired." The song spread throughout Scotland, where it was sung to mark the end of the old year, and soon to the English-speaking world, where it's sung to mark the new.

The question it asks is clear: Should those we knew and loved be forgotten and never thought of? Should old times past be forgotten? No, says the song, they shouldn't be. We'll remember those times and those people, we'll toast them now and always, we'll keep them close. "We'll take a cup of kindness yet." .... [more]

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot,     And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days of auld lang syne	And here 's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o' thine; And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught For auld lang syne.
We twa hae rin about the braes, And pu'd the gowans fine; But we've wander'd monie a weary fit Sin' auld lang syne.	And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, And surely I'll be mine; And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne!
We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, Frae mornin' sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roar'd       Sin' auld lang syne.	Chorus: For auld lang syne, my jo, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne.

Days of Auld Lang What?

Only by grace

Phil, at Brandywine Books, writes about the importance of Confession as a part of corporate worship:

.... John Hendryx says he had to warm up to use of corporate confessions, but now he cherishes them. “For most it makes the time of worship more authentic and joyful for it strikes a blow against self-righteousness and humbles us before God as we say what we know to be true of ourselves and the only Lord who saves us. It reminds us that we are not better than others and that it is only grace (an alien righteousness) which makes us what we are.”

That mirrors my experience with corporate confession of sin. Reading with those around me how I have not done what I should have done and did what I should not have done opens me up to the wonderful announcement that Christ Jesus has given me his righteousness and set me free from the power of sin. ....

When I lead worship in our small church we sometimes use the General Confession from The Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare Thou them, O God, who confess their faults. Restore Thou them that are penitent; According to Thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus Our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for His sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of Thy holy Name. Amen.

Immediately followed by:

Listen to the words of Our Lord: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

And these words from the Apostle John: “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the Propitiation for our sins.”

 Sin and Confession | Brandywine Books

"Settled science"

nature presents some of "The science myths that will not die." The author observes:

Once a myth is here, it is often here to stay. Psychological studies suggest that the very act of attempting to dispel a myth leads to stronger attachment to it. In one experiment, exposure to pro-vaccination messages reduced parents' intention to vaccinate their children in the United States. In another, correcting misleading claims from politicians increased false beliefs among those who already held them. “Myths are almost impossible to eradicate,” says Kirschner. “The more you disprove it, often the more hard core it becomes.”

The scientific myths addressed:

• Myth 1: Screening saves lives for all types of cancer
  
• Myth 2: Antioxidants are good and free radicals are bad
• Myth 3: Humans have exceptionally large brains
• Myth 4: Individuals learn best when taught in their preferred learning style
• Myth 5: The human population is growing exponentially (and we're doomed)

In-service training indoctrinated us in the "learning style" approach throughout my time as a secondary school teacher. I was particularly interested in what the article had to say about that.

.... One such myth is that individuals learn best when they are taught in the way they prefer to learn. A verbal learner, for example, supposedly learns best through oral instructions, whereas a visual learner absorbs information most effectively through graphics and other diagrams.

There are two truths at the core of this myth: many people have a preference for how they receive information, and evidence suggests that teachers achieve the best educational outcomes when they present information in multiple sensory modes. Couple that with people's desire to learn and be considered unique, and conditions are ripe for myth-making. ....

In 2008, four cognitive neuroscientists reviewed the scientific evidence for and against learning styles. Only a few studies had rigorously put the ideas to the test and most of those that did showed that teaching in a person's preferred style had no beneficial effect on his or her learning. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the authors of one study wrote. ....

In the past few decades, research into educational techniques has started to show that there are interventions that do improve learning, including getting students to summarize or explain concepts to themselves. And it seems almost all individuals, barring those with learning disabilities, learn best from a mixture of words and graphics, rather than either alone.

Yet the learning-styles myth makes it difficult to get these evidence-backed concepts into classrooms. When Howard-Jones speaks to teachers to dispel the learning-styles myth, for example, they often don't like to hear what he has to say. “They have disillusioned faces. Teachers invested hope, time and effort in these ideas,” he says. “After that, they lose interest in the idea that science can support learning and teaching.”

Charles Krauthammer addressed another persistent myth last week:

When the federal government’s 1980 “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” warned about the baleful effects of saturated fats, public interest activists joined the fight and managed to persuade major food companies to switch to the shiny new alternative: trans fats. Thirty-five years later, the Food and Drug Administration finally determined that trans fats are not just useless but unsafe, and ordered them removed from all foods. Oops.

So much for settled science. .... [more]

The science myths that will not die : Nature News & Comment, Food fads: Make mine gluten-full - The Washington Post

"Eternity shut in a span"

Lessons and Carols from King's College

A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols (Carols from King's) - YouTube

"O that birth forever blessèd"

Of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see, evermore and evermore!

O that birth forever blessèd, when the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face, evermore and evermore!

O ye heights of heaven adore Him; angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him, and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert ring, evermore and evermore!

Christ, to Thee with God the Father, and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant and high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory, evermore and evermore!
(Prudentius, 5th Century)

"Marley was dead..."

The book is better than the films and plays. If you've never read it, you should. I rather envied the friend whose father read it to his family every Christmas Eve.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.  Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. ....

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley.  Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. ....  [more]

The story can be downloaded free for any form of e-reader: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

"He became poor"

For you know the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ,

that though he was rich,

yet for your sake He became poor,

so that you by his poverty might become rich.

2 Corinthians 8:9

"The only begotten..."

"Bidding you joy in the morning!"

From The Wind in the Willows, Christmas at Mole End:

"What's up?" inquired the Rat, pausing in his labours.

"I think it must be the field-mice," replied the Mole, with a touch of pride in his manner. "They go round carol-singing regularly at this time of the year. They're quite an institution in these parts. And they never pass me over—they come to Mole End last of all; and I used to give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford it. It will be like old times to hear them again."

"Let's have a look at them!" cried the Rat, jumping up and running to the door.

It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the forecourt, lit by the dim rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little fieldmice stood in a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry streets to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.

CAROL

Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours in the morning!

Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
Come from far away you to greet—
You by the fire and we in the street
Bidding you joy in the morning!

For ere one half of the night was gone,
Sudden a star has led us on,
Raining bliss and benison—
Bliss to-morrow and more anon,
Joy for every morning!

Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow—
Saw the star o'er a stable low;
Mary she might not further go
Welcome thatch, and litter below!
Joy was hers in the morning!

And then they heard the angels tell
"Who were the first to cry Nowell?
Animals all, as it befell,
In the stable where they did dwell!
Joy shall be theirs in the morning."

The voices ceased, the singers, bashful but smiling, exchanged sidelong glances, and silence succeeded—but for a moment only. Then, from up above and far away, down the tunnel they had so lately travelled was borne to their ears in a faint musical hum the sound of distant bells ringing a joyful and clangorous peal.

"Very well sung, boys!" cried the Rat heartily. "And now come along in, all of you, and warm yourselves by the fire, and have something hot!"

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Chapter Five: Dulce Domum

How did December 25 become Christmas?

Andrew McGowan on "How December 25 Became Christmas":

.... There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).

The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.

Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. ....

There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. ....

Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25. ....

Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.” ....

Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross...a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death.

The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud.....

In the end, we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year.... (more)

How December 25 Became Christmas - Biblical Archaeology Society

"The most valuable magazine in the world"

Conan Doyle's earliest Sherlock Holmes stories were not particularly successful. Michael Dirda explains how they came to be written, why Conan Doyle didn't believe they were his most important work, and how, nevertheless, they and the subsequent stories made his characters famous and enduring.

.... A Study in Scarlet was turned down by one publisher after another, until it was finally accepted by Ward, Lock, and Co., who offered to buy the British copyright for a derisory twenty-five pounds. Out of desperation, Conan Doyle took the paltry sum, then still had to wait a year before his short novel came out in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887. Today, that annual may be the most valuable magazine in the world. Only thirty-three copies are known to exist and many are tattered or incomplete. If a truly fine copy were to appear on the market today, it might bring a quarter of a million dollars or more.

The 1887 Beeton’s containing A Study in Scarlet sold moderately well, and the novel was later republished as a book, with rather crude illustrations by Conan Doyle’s artist father. And that was all. There was no great hoopla, no recognition of a new star in the nascent detective story firmament.

Yet from the first page, Conan Doyle’s storytelling mastery—the genial narrative voice, the fast-moving action—sweeps the reader along. In short order we learn that John H. Watson has been an army doctor, was grievously wounded at the battle of Maiwand in the Second Afghan War, and now, broken in health, has wearily returned to England. One day he encounters an old acquaintance who tells him about a chap looking for someone to share digs with in Baker Street.

Watson and Holmes meet at St. Bart’s hospital, where Holmes’ first recorded words are “I’ve found it!”—that is, the English for “Eureka,” exclaimed by Archimedes when he grasped the displacement of liquids as he sat in his bath. A Study in Scarlet also provides the first appearance of the original Baker Street Irregulars, the London street urchins who can go anywhere and overhear anyone, and who serve the detective as a city-wide surveillance system. Most important of all, Watson discovers his own new vocation: Near the story’s end, he tells Holmes, “You should publish an account of the case,” and then adds, “If you won’t, I will for you.” The detective shrugs. “You may do what you like, Doctor.” .... [more]

Something to Write Holmes About | Lapham’s Quarterly

Rudyard Kipling

From an appreciation of, and an appeal to reconsider Kipling:

Kipling is not at all like his image, which is a good thing, since he is widely regarded as jingoistic, narrow and racist. It is a pity if, for this reason, some never read him.

Kipling was always an outsider, and never a member of the Establishment. He received the Nobel Prize, but refused any honour, including the Order of Merit, that would identify him with a single country. ....

Beerbohm...puts his finger on a more important feature of Kipling’s world: its rejection of Christianity. Kipling lost all that in the Southsea boarding house.

It didn’t seem to trouble late Victorian readers who had seen their tide of faith ebb on Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” (1867). Kipling did often refer to the Law, almost as if it were the Law of Moses, but his version is the Law of the Jungle, or of schoolboys, or soldiers, or hunters.

The Law may be unjust to an individual caught up in its workings, but it is ineluctable. In his poem Recessional (marking the diamond jubilee of the Queen and Empress Victoria in 1897), the “lesser breeds without the Law” are not the natives on whose behalf the White Man takes up his burden; they are rival empire-builders such as Russia and Germany. ....

It is not for political theory that Kipling is read, but for his astonishing prose (notably in short stories) and his poetry. ....

“His touch is uncanny,” says Daniel Karlin, whose edition of Kipling’s stories and poems has just been reissued. “He can evoke a taste, a smell, a look, a human expression with immediate and infallible conviction, so that reading him is often a series of delighted assentings.”

Yes, the female labourers walking north along Grand Trunk Road in Kim, for example, are overpoweringly real. “A solid line of blue, rising and falling like the back of a caterpillar in haste, would swing up through the quivering dust,” overtaking the boy and his companion.

But I find that a response as frequent as delight to Kipling’s convincing reality is tears. Indeed he himself sees tears, not rationality, as the distinguishing mark of humanity..... (more)

Rudyard Kipling: the misfit poet

Adiaphora

In "On Disputable Matters" D.A. Carson argues that "just because something is in fact disputed does not mean that it is theologically disputable."

Every generation of Christians faces the need to decide just what beliefs and behavior are morally mandated of all believers, and what beliefs and behavior may be left to the individual believer’s conscience. The distinction is rooted in Scripture: for example, the practice of certain kinds of behavior guarantees that a person will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9–10), but other kinds of behavior are left up to the individual Christian: “One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God” (Rom 14:5–6).

The matters where Christians may safely agree to disagree have traditionally been labeled adiaphora, “indifferent things.” They are not “indifferent things” in the sense that all sides view them as unimportant, for some believers, according to Paul, view them as very important, or view their freedom from such behavior as very important: “Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.” They are indifferent matters in the sense that believing certain things or not believing certain things, adopting certain practices or not adopting them, does not keep a person from inheriting the kingdom of God. Today there is a tendency to refer to such adiaphora as “disputable matters” rather than as “indifferent matters”—that is, theologically disputable matters. On the whole, that terminology is probably better: in contemporary linguistic usage “disputable matters” is less likely to be misunderstood than “indifferent matters.”

In the easy cases, the difference between indisputable matters and disputable matters is straightforward. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an indisputable matter: that is, this is something to be confessed as bedrock truth if the gospel makes any sense and if people are to be saved (1 Cor 15:1–19). If Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is futile, the witnesses who claimed they saw him are not telling the truth, we remain in our sins, and we are of all people most to be pitied because we are building our lives on a lie. By contrast, Paul allows people to differ on the matter of honoring certain days, with each side fully persuaded in its own mind.

Immediately, however, we recognize that some things that were thought theologically indisputable in the past have become disputable. Paedobaptism was at one time judged in some circles to be so indisputably right that Anabaptists could be drowned with a clear conscience: if they wanted to be immersed, let us grant them their wish. Until the last three or four decades, going to movies and drinking alcohol was prohibited in the majority of American evangelical circles: the prohibition, in such circles, was indisputable. Nowadays most evangelicals view such prohibitions as archaic at best, displaced by a neat transfer to the theologically disputable column.....

What follows are ten reflections on what does and does not constitute a theologically disputable matter. .... [more]

On Disputable Matters | Themelios from The Gospel Coalition

Tolerance

In an essay that makes the important distinctions Glen A. Sproviero explains "The problem with pluralism," and uses categories Avery Cardinal Dulles cited after 9/11 to show how we can live together without compromising conviction:

Whittaker Chambers wrote that “the crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.” Pluralism is the manifestation of such indifference because it admits that belief is subjective and personal rather than an expression of existential reality. A believer cannot profess to be a good Jew, Christian, or Muslim while admitting to the theological truth of another faith. But, while different faiths cannot simultaneously represent the truth of ultimate existence, belief in one faith does not demand intolerance toward others.

...[I]n a lecture entitled “Christ Among the Religions.” ...Dulles acknowledged that we live in a society that “includes people of many faiths and of no faith at all,” and examined four possible models by which different faiths can relate to one another: coercion, convergence, pluralism, and tolerance.

Coercion was the predominant model throughout the majority of human history. Political leaders often compelled religious unity among their subjects, and conquerors forced their own beliefs upon their subject peoples. .... [I]n most cases, “religious coercion survives only in nations that have come late to modernity.” This is particularly true with regard to Islamic extremism as propagated by ISIS and the Taliban. ....

The second model, convergence, is also untenable because it demands that believers concede that differences among faiths are superficial and that every religion is an equally valid path to God. This model is premised on the theory that all religions are human constructions and, in the words of Dulles, are “faltering attempts to articulate the whole and transcendent mystery by which human existence is encompassed.”

But to maintain the integrity of this view, it is necessary for orthodox believers to concede too much. ....

In the politically correct atmosphere of early twenty-first century America, the third model – pluralism – has become a near ubiquitous ideal. To some degree, it has become a polytheistic faith in its own right and reflects the idea that all religious teachings embody particular aspects of the Logos, and that every faith must be a partial manifestation of reality, which can be improved by its interactions with other faiths.

Like the convergence model, this is a favorite of relativists who believe in the epistemic impossibility of objective truth. To the average apologist of pluralism, religion is a personal feeling or sentiment, and claims relating to ultimate reality are viewed as strictly private matters. But to the devout believer, faith is not an individual preference and the idea that every religion is entitled to equal deference belies the very idea of truth. To be a pluralist, for many, is to propagate a lie.

But, how are we to coexist peacefully in a world of many faiths? Are we to live as isolated beings, disconnected from each other and utterly separated by our beliefs? I would propose that the most reasonable answer is the fourth model – tolerance.

While religious beliefs form the core of our being and inform every aspect of our existence (including atheists and agnostics), we need not shut out people of other faiths, nor should we treat them as a subclass. Civilized people understand that the freedom to choose one’s faith is a God-given right, an intimate part of personhood.

Tolerance allows believers to engage with people of different beliefs, but to do so in a manner that does not compromise first principles. .... [more]

The problem with pluralism | NewBostonPost

“To take life with real seriousness is to take it joyfully”

I always enjoy reading Andrew Ferguson. In the current Weekly Standard he writes about "Jingle Hell: The debasement of Christmas Songs."

.... In the early church, Christmas replaced the baptism of Jesus as the preeminent celebration of the season because it stood as a happy rebuke to the Manicheans. Believing as they did in the absolute division of spirit and matter, no group of heretics has ever been gloomier. The celebration of Christmas was a way of telling the world: This really happened, to a real mother and a real child, made in flesh and blood, the coming together of God and man. And music itself is the natural expression of the union of spirit and matter, the physical act of plucking strings or hammering keys or thrumming vocal cords to produce something that points beyond the physical. ....

The idea of Christmas as a musical celebration finally took hold when peasants and other lowly folk began adapting local dance tunes to the purpose. The origin of Christmas music in dance music is worth remembering. The tunes, outfitted with words of praise and the appropriate narratives of Jesus and Mary and Joseph, of the Three Kings and the shepherds, were an effusion of popular piety—and a rebellion against the grim impositions of church hierarchy throughout Germany and, later, England. A good carol, said the great musicologist Percy Deamer, “was witness to the spirit of a more spontaneous and undoubting faith.” The effusions were organic, growing from the bottom up, and like the Gospels themselves, filled with metaphors taken from field and hearth:

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

Deamer traced the word “carol” back through old French to the Greek word for “an encircling dance.” Movement and dynamism and joy were the essential attributes, inseparable from the religious meaning. The message of Christmas was the Christian message, too: the Light coming into the world and the darkness proving powerless against it. What’s not to celebrate? Why not dance?

“To take life”—and hence Christmas—“with real seriousness is to take it joyfully,” Deamer went on. “For seriousness is only sad when it is superficial: the carol is thus nearer to the truth because it is jolly.” ....

In the past that lesson has often been lost, at times even more thoroughly than in our own day—a reminder that should cheer us up, if you’ll forgive the expression. The serious joy, or the joyful seriousness, of Christmas is offensive to the grim Christian. When Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans seized power from a pious English king, one of their first official acts was to ban Christmas observances of any kind. ....

“Yule tide is fool tide,” went the Puritans’ dismissive slogan.... And once in a while, at Christmas, buried in tinsel and credit card receipts, a practicing Christian might be tempted to agree. It’s a familiar human paradox that the phony good cheer of secular Christmas increases even as the genuine joy of Christmas recedes....

Jingle Hell | The Weekly Standard (probably behind a subscription wall)

"Sifting and winnowing"

The University of Wisconsin regents may act to insure that controversial speech is protected. If they take the proposed action they will be doing better than those in authority at certain other public and private universities. From The Capital Times:

.... The resolution to be considered when regents meet Thursday and Friday in Madison calls on members of the university community to maintain civility and a climate of mutual respect during heated debate.

The statement invokes UW’s famed 1894 commitment to open inquiry through “fearless sifting and winnowing.” It also prohibits university community members from interfering with the freedom of others “to express views they reject or even loathe.”

The resolution will be taken up first by Board of Regents education committee on Thursday afternoon and sent to the full board on Friday. ....

The regents’ proposed resolution....declares that it is up to members of the university community, not for the institution itself, to judge what speech is “offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.” And for them, too, “to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress exploration of ideas or expression of speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose.”

The proposed resolution also cites legal limits to free expression, including genuine threats, privacy interests and false defamation. In addition, the university may under the law reasonably limit the time, place and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt ordinary activities....

Next to the main entrance to Bascom Hall, University of Wisconsin, Madison

As black students demand to be heard, UW regents prepare to affirm free speech, set limits | Higher education | host.madison.com

Sabbath

Poetry from First Things: "Sabbath" by Amy Imbody:

Sabbath: You make demands
upon my heart, upon my hands,
and, certainly, upon my mind:
a quietness, profound, benign
where receptivity will find
its satisfaction: fruitfulness flows
from this place of deep repose.

Sabbath by Amy Imbody | Articles | First Things

Books for the grumpy, lugubrious, or distraught

George Weigel recommends books for Christmas, among which:

The Inimitable Jeeves; Very Good, Jeeves; Right Ho, Jeeves; Thank You, Jeeves; The Code of the Woosters; and Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by P.G. Wodehouse (Norton or Touchstone): It’s going to be a tough year, 2016; it’s impossible to stay grumpy reading Wodehouse. So start now, and invite lugubrious or distraught family and friends to the party.

All available at Amazon.

Books for Christmas | George Weigel | First Things

"It is only the past that lives."

Via Phil at Brandywine Books:

It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it. It is the present, not the past, that dies; this present moment, to which we give so much attention, is forever flitting from our eyes and fingers into that pedestal and matrix of our lives which we call the past. It is only the past that lives. (Will Durant, “The Map of Human Character“)

"[T]his present moment, to which we give so much attention, 

is forever flitting from our eyes and fingers into that pedestal and matrix of our lives 

which we call the past."