In the common parlance of modern America, the word “jolly” has fallen distinctly out of use. While words like “fun” and “happy” abound in everyday conversation, “jolly” is, in the minds of many, inexorably tied to Christmas. Traditional carols have kept the word alive in reference to the festivities of this season; one would be
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“Aletheia!” A 7-year-old girl grabs my hands and pulls me through the playing kids toward my church’s stash of books. “Will you read us a story?” The kids at my church enjoy picture books year-round, but—during the holiday season—the stories begin to revolve distinctly around Christmas. Several of these stories are ones I enjoyed when
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Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. If this is so, many of us are more cynical than we realize because we don’t know the difference between price and value. We buy the cheapest because this is our duty as good consumers. We need
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My son’s house sits at the crest of a hill in a valley in the mountains of western North Carolina. On a recent visit, I was up at 4 a.m.—I’m an early riser—sipping coffee on the deck and looking at the litter of stars in the sky on that clear October night. Other than two
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When I was a little girl, my mother would take me and my five siblings to Grants, a long-gone discount store. We did this the first week in December every year, shopping for each other using money we had earned and saved. Running down the aisles, touching everything, brimming with excitement, and bursting with secrets,
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Maya Kowalski was admitted to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in 2016. She was 10 and in extreme pain from a condition called complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Sally Smith, a “child abuse pediatrician” who worked at the hospital through a state contract with child protective services, insisted Maya’s condition was caused and exaggerated by
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