Robert Zemekis’ "The Polar Express" is one of my favorite movies to watch during the Christmas season. Whether it’s religious or personal, this movie is about believing in something you cannot see or finding your way back to faith.
I may be disconnected from my own family, and my list of friends may have slimmed over the years, but the people who remain are truly “good-hearted” and make me better.
Scripture continually warns us against showing preference to the wealthy. (James 2:2-4) Yet the less-heralded “ism” known as classism runs rampant throughout American Christianity. Nowhere is its presence more glaring than in the so-called Prosperity Gospel.
When I assert that Christmas is political I’m not complaining that we’ve lost sight of “the reason for the season.” What I am concerned about is that Christians who consider Christmas a religious festival may not remember how politically radical the commemoration of Jesus’s birthday was from its inception.
Yule will be celebrated by Wiccans and many other Pagans in the Northern Hemisphere on Dec. 21, the day of the winter solstice. For Pagans, the shortest day of the year marks the end of the descent into darkness and the beginning of the return of the light.
War shapes our lives, sometimes encouraging violence, verbal and physical. Outside war zones, ordinary citizens find ourselves drawn into taking sides. How can we create a better future for our children, ourselves, even for those we don’t know?