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Crusading through history

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How do you sum up how billions of Christians across the world observe the birth of Christ? It’s difficult to do. This Associated Press round-up begins with a completely unfazed Pope Benedict being knocked down by a deranged woman and ends with 47,000 Filipinos, displaced by an erupting volcano, eating Christmas dinner at shelters. It includes the sad news that some Christians in Pakistan fear marking the day, still scared by the Muslim riots targeting them from earlier this year.


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Dylan the mysterious 'true believer'

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So Bob Dylan went and made himself a Christmas album, instead of a holiday album. It ends with him singing “amen” at the end of a non-ironic “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Many will note that the album does not contain a performance, ironic or otherwise, of “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.”


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Behind the Music: Handel edition

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It’s that time of year when concerts of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah occur with seemingly ubiquity. The New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini reviewed one such performance yesterday, remarking that the bass “sang the repeated ‘the dead shall be raised incorruptible’ and ‘we shall be changed’ with such prophetic vigor that the prospect seemed almost terrifying.” I read a review of a different Messiah concert in the same paper a few weeks ago.


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Face it, abortion is more than politics

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As the Divine Ms. MZ mentioned the other day in her “Nightmare on Capitol Hill” post, abortion is the issue that simply will not die in the ongoing debates about health-care reform. Right to life issues also hover in the background in those arguments about care of the elderly, too.


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Discovering a conservative giant

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David Kirkpatrick had a fascinating profile of Robert P. George in the Sunday New York Times magazine. George is a Catholic public intellectual — a professor at Princeton who writes about policy and politics. The first thing to say about the piece is that it’s a great idea. I’ve been reading George for years but, then again, I’m the type of person who reads First Things and The Public Discourse. The average Sunday New York Times magazine reader probably doesn’t. Considering the influence George has on conservatives, a profile makes perfect sense.


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Merry Christmas, Irv Sutley!

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Ah, yes, fewer than two shopping days 48 hours left to fire your salvo in the 2009 Christmas wars! To that end, The New York Times has a colorful little report on an order to remove seasonal religious symbols displayed in a public building and California. Only this time, there was no cross, creche or menorah:


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