To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here If you can believe it, Jingle Bells used to be considered too racy to be connected with December 25. James Lord Pierpont, the Savannah, GA church choir director who composed it in 1857, seems to have had Thanksgiving in mind. He originally named it One Horse Open Sleigh. But after Mrs. Otis Waterman, one… Read more »
To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here A few years ago, an author recounted her experience waiting for a flight in an airport lounge. She got out her newspaper and opened up a small package of cookies she had purchased to fend off hunger. After a few minutes, she heard a rustling sound beside her. She looked from behind her newspaper… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Tennessee Williams’ most famous play, A Streetcar Named Desire, debuted on Broadway in 1947. A journalist who was able to find his way backstage asked one of the performers how he would summarize its plot. The actor replied, “It’s about a guy who comes to take a woman to an insane asylum.” To put it… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here The Hallmark Channel has become Must See TV for Americans who can’t get enough Christmas movies. This fall, the folks at Hallmark began screening holiday movies 11 days before Halloween. We’re not talking about cinematic favorites like Miracle on 34th Street or It’s a Wonderful Life, or that most poignant of all Christmas classics,… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here For more than a few people, Xmas has become a four-letter word. According to a number of Christ-followers, Xmas shouldn’t even be a word. Never mind that earlier this century the editors of Webster’s formally granted Xmas a place in their dictionary. The suspicion remains that it is a cheap, secular substitute for the word “Christmas”… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Before Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band hit stores in 1967, rock music albums were typically collections of stand-alone songs. But the eighth studio album of the Beatles broke new ground. Music historians identity it as an early “concept album” – an attempt to establish a running theme linking both sides of an… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was sick with grief as Christmas approached in 1863. He was still mourning the death of his wife Frances, who had died in a house fire. His oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, or Charlie, had enlisted to fight for the North in the Civil War – against his father’s wishes. On… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Once again this year, our Christmas tree is overloaded with ornaments that our kids made when they barely knew how to use scissors or color within the lines. I’m pretty sure that our grown-up children, who are now in their 30s and 40s, could do a whole lot better. Does that mean we should… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here After the first screening of The Wizard of Oz in 1939, the producers decided to cut two songs. One was “The Jitterbug,” which was performed in the Haunted Forest by the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and Dorothy. And Toto, too, of course. Another was a song that MGM boss Louis G. Mayer… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here In 1915, Dorothy Sayers became one of the first women ever to graduate from prestigious Oxford University in England. Actually, she wasn’t given a degree. That was a privilege granted only to men. Sayers finally received her sheepskin retroactively in 1920, when Oxford concluded that women might be worthy of academic accolades after all. … Read more »
