Music

"Nå tennes tusen julelys"

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Here’s one of my favorite songs from Sissel’s Kyrkjebø’s first Christmas album, the one that made her a superstar in Norway. The title means “Now a thousand Christmas lights are being lit.” I was looking for a live performance video, but the only one I could find is half talk (in Norwegian). So you’ll just have to look at her face on the album cover, which seems to me no chore. Below is an original translation of the lyrics, done by me at this keyboard at this very moment:

Around this darkened world tonight,

A thousand candles glow,

And all God’s stars above shine down

To cheer our night below.

And over towns and over fields

The joyful carols sing

The news that in a manger bed

We find our God and King.

O Star that shone o’er Bethlehem,

To hail the holy birth,

Bring to our hearts the angels’ song

Of love and peace on earth.

So every wand’ring heart shall see

A beacon in their sky,

To light their path through this dark world

To Christmas home on high.

(For the record, this picture of Sissel on the “Glade Jul” album was the inspiration for the appearance of the character Halla in The Year of the Warrior.)

Blogs, Socials, Creative Writing

The Night After Christmas: An Advent Ghost Story

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Wayne’s car died downtown while a frizzy-headed kid watched. Three sickly children stopped playing under a large electric snowflake when he walked by, and a pale, stained baby, rolling on the sidewalk, began wailing. Now he runs past the shuttered tourist-shop windows, seeing shadows in doorways, twisted faces in car windows, and figures from the corners of his eyes. The rumor can’t be true–that children, murdered by Herod, haunt the streets tonight seeking abusers. Broken sidewalk catches his foot and cracks his knee like a walnut.

Then they come.

Pallid boys emerge from the cracks: grabbing, pulling, twisting, choking.

(Thanks for Loren Eaton for organizing this shared storytelling event. See his post for a list of other stories.)

Creative Writing

Reunion: An Advent Ghost Story

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Mary Beth hopped through the door spritely, like she’d always done, alighting on a chair. Her dark curls bounced as she glanced around, but he sat gaping. It had been three years since the funeral.

“Why don’t you throw out that sorry wreath I made? Christmas is about hope, grace, life–” She stopped herself with giggles.

His heart skittered. “But, honey, you–ain’t you dead?”

Her impish smile grew. “Darlin’, Death’s been beat.” She reached and lifted him like a newborn. He gasped, then laughed as dawn crashed in with trumpets, announcing a triumphant king’s return.

(Thanks for Loren Eaton for organizing this shared storytelling event. Here is his index post with links to other stories, and I have one more story to share a little later this morning. Merry Christmas.)

Religion

On the dating of Christmas

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German nativity scene
I’ve dealt with this before, among other places here. As many times as you’ve heard it said that Christians just “took over” the Roman Saturnalia celebration and turned it into Christmas, that “fact” actually rests on fairly shaky ground.

There’s good reason to believe that the date was chosen for symbolic and theological reasons, not simply as a substitutionary placeholder for Roman orgies.

First Things links to this article from Biblical Archaeology Review, which affirms the argument. The case is strengthened by the fact that the author is plainly not a believer in biblical inerrancy.

To be clear, the argument here is not that Jesus was in fact born on December 25. The argument is that the early church had other reasons for choosing the date than just usurping a heathen festival.

Which means that that guy in your church who says you’re going to hell because you have a Christmas tree is putting his confidence in questionable scholarship.

Religion

Have a Simeon Christmas

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Simeon and Anna

What follows may look, to start with, suspiciously like a pity party. I understand why you might think that, since I haven’t been above such fishing expeditions in the past. But I’m going to do my level best to avoid “poor me” games here. I mean to address, not my own situation, but that of others.

Lindsay Stallones over at Evangelical Outpost has posted a meditation pretty much guaranteed to bring us all down. In We Need a Darker Christmas, she notes that the true Christmas story is not a merry and bright Claymation special: Continue reading Have a Simeon Christmas →

Creative Writing

Advent Ghost Stories

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Loren Eaton’s Shared Storytelling: Advent Ghosts 2010 is coming up Friday. I have a couple short-short stories (only 100 words) to post, which I plan to do early and mid-morning. Loren will have links to everyone’s stories, and I’ll link to his index post once it’s up.

Authors, Reading

Flaherty on Lewis in the Wall Street Journal.

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I don’t remember who pointed this out to me, but Micheal Flaherty at The Wall Street Journal offers a brilliant defense, both of Sarah Palin and of C. S. Lewis, against Joy Behar’s ignorant dismissal of the great Oxbridge scholar and Christian apologist as somebody who wrote children’s books.

An amazing slip-up on the part of someone who, we seem to be constantly assured, is one of the great minds of our time. I suppose I could say I was Surprised by Joy’s Ignorance.

Fiction

Church's Latest Intense Mystery

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Torie Bosch reviews James Church’s latest novel, The Man with the Baltic Stare, for Slate, focusing on the reasons given for why more North Koreans don’t cut and run.

“Church’s real gift lies in intensifying that mystery,” Bosch writes, “presenting to us a nation of living and conniving people, not brainwashed ciphers. In his fourth volume, he sheds more light than has been ever before on the puzzling mix of motives that lurk in the North Korean who stays put.”