We often think of the secularization of Christmas as a very recent thing. But its origins go back to the nineteenth century with the writing of “The Night Before Christmas,” and the Thomas Nast version of Santa Claus: the jolly, plump, white-bearded rendition we know today. Irving Berlin’s famous song “White Christmas,” written in 1942
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“Is Christmas too materialistic? Well, it’s not as materialistic as God becoming flesh, redeeming our sinful flesh, and sending us back into the material world to live out our faith in love and service to our physical neighbors.” –Gene Veith We are routinely told that Charles Dickens’ beloved story, A Christmas Carol, was instrumental in giving
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There is a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric flying around about the $1.5 trillion tax package Congressional Republicans delivered on this week. Democratic leaders decried the legislation, declaring it “the end of the world… Armageddon.” (I’m not joking, those are the actual words used by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who should probably consider retiring.) Republicans, meanwhile,
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In this new article for Aeon, Ronnie de Sousa, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Toronto, argues that the facts of evolution entail that “there is no such thing as human nature.” Instead, what we are is what we make of ourselves by our individual and collective choices. There is no prior “human
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National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru has a new article, “The Tax Cut Doesn’t ‘Tilt Toward the Middle Class.” The piece apparently responds to commentary by Veronique de Rugy and me about the effects of the GOP tax plan. Ramesh says: According to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), households making between $20,000 and $30,000 pay 0.7
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In recent years, Americans have been having two parallel conversations about the problems with men in our society. On the one hand, there is the conversation on college campuses and in the media about how men have created a poisonous environment—that they are privileged and sexist; they don’t treat women well; and they are frequently
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