Christmas Hymns
A fine compilation of Christmas hymnody, done in wonderful harmony. Enjoy on this day of great joy! Christus natus est, alleluia!
Year: 2025
A Christmas Meditation for the Year of Our Lord 2025
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn. 1:1) Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. As we celebrate Christmas, these words from the prologue of the Gospel of St. John invite us to approach the Feast of the Incarnation by contemplating the divinity of the Christ Child. As we sing[…]
Saints Adam and Eve
Christmas Eve is the traditional commemoration of Adam and Eve, our first parents – I don’t think there’s any etymological connection between Eve and Eve, the first derived from ye Olde English ǣfnung, which means towards sunset, the end of the day. The name Eve is an English transliteration of her Hebrew name given by[…]
Silent Night, of Joy and Peace Amidst the Tumult
The beloved hymn Silent Night was first performed on Christmas Eve, 1818, fittingly at Saint Nicholas parish in Oberndorf in what was then the Austrian empire. The music was composed by the organist and schoolmaster Franz Xaver Gruber, and the words by Father Joseph Mohr, the parish priest, who had penned the six stanzas, in[…]
Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man. You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. (Saint Augustine, +430)
A Christmas Carol: Thoughts, and an Audio Book
Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol was first published on this December 19 back in 1843, and it has been a much beloved classic ever since. It is really is an Advent story, as are most Christmas stories, and songs, as Stephen White recently wrote. Just as most marriage films are really ‘engagement’ films –[…]
The Meaning of Christmas as Advent Draws to a Close
BENEDICT XVI GENERAL AUDIENCE Paul VI Audience Hall Wednesday, 20 December 2006 The meaning of Christmas Dear Brothers and Sisters, “The Lord is close: come, let us adore him”. With this invocation, the liturgy invites us in these last days of Advent to approach as it were on tip-toe the Bethlehem Grotto where the extraordinary event that[…]
John of Kanty’s Holy Hidden Life
On this Eve of Christmas Eve, we celebrate in a subdued manner the commemoration of John of Cantius (1390 – 1473), or ‘Kanty’ in the original Polish transliteration – a scholar, teacher, gentleman, priest and, most of all, a saint, who spent his whole life as a professor at the Krakow Academy, later named the[…]
Grace in the Gutter
A Christmas Reflection on Evil, Freedom, and Redemption in Bad Santa Editors’ note: the film reviewed below contains explicit sexual and violent scenes, sustained crudity and profane humor. This review is not meant to serve as a recommendation, but rather as an example of the application of Christian principles to morally disordered narratives to seek[…]
Bach’s Cantata for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
J.S. Bach composed Cantatas for many Sundays and feasts (over 200!)- in the Lutheran liturgical calendar, to be sure, but one which remained close to its Catholic origins. Here is the one for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Premiered on December 22, 1715, it is a fitting way to prepare for the birth of our[…]