Christmas, it is said, is “too commercial,” an affair of buying and selling, deals and exchanges. It is all about gifts. It is all about materialism. It should be more spiritual! Call me a bad Catholic, but I have never quite been able to get into the spirit of this sentiment. Christmas will ever be [...]
It was still dark outside when the boy awakened and his thoughts immediately turned to the gifts that would be awaiting him under the tree downstairs. This year, like every other year he could recall, the tree was a little too tall for the ceiling and leaned precariously toward the fireplace opening. In his younger [...]
Why, one wonders, would readers of The Imaginative Conservative be interested in hearing of my enjoyment of music videos designed for very young children? The answer is that the Wiggles offer children (of all ages) entertainment that is both imaginative and conservative. I have a confession to make. For almost twenty years I’ve been a [...]
Winter, for many of us, signals the end of the year. It is a time when we reflect on our labor, what we’ve achieved, what we haven’t achieved, what we will do better or make right. But how much of this reflection is focused on the joy and mystery of the Nativity? “Census at [...]
What would the Christmas season be without Sleigh Ride, the beloved orchestral chestnut by Leroy Anderson? It’s one of those festive selections endlessly piped into our ears on radio, television, and in every public marketplace, to the point of becoming a sort of seasonal wallpaper—something taken for granted. But if Sleigh Ride is a tune [...]
It is insufficient to say that Ebenezer Scrooge is greedy. Scrooge believes that in his private life no one can make claims on his substance or time. He the kind of man who understands life to reduce to contracts. In September 1843, Charles Dickens started writing his little book, A Christmas Carol, one of very [...]
The typical re-telling of the Christmas story has Joseph, Mary and the donkey arriving in Bethlehem on a cold, winter night looking for a place to stay. All the hotels have “No Vacancy” signs on display because so many people, like Mary and Joseph, have traveled to Bethlehem to register for the census. A grumpy [...]
With a seemingly (and thankfully) endless supply of books about J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis flowing out from every conceivable press, it is easy to overlook some hidden gems. To assist Imaginative Conservative readers with their Christmas book shopping, I have highlighted below some books about Lewis and/or Tolkien that have been published over the [...]
Considering my enthusiasm for Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol," it should come as no surprise that film adaptations of the novella are on the list of movies that the Pearce family like to watch during the Advent and Christmas seasons. Here are our favorites. George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge I confess to [...]
In this Advent season, we wait in expectation, we hope for the coming of the Lord Who has come and Who is coming and Who will come again. We remind ourselves of His absence from the lives of so many in the world today, and we pray that graces may come to cure us of [...]
The Advent wind begins to stir With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir, It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea, And in between we only see Clouds hurrying across the sky And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry And branches bending to the gale Against great skies all silver pale The world seems travelling into [...]
For whom or what do we vote when we put our hands in our pocket and take out our cash or our debit and credit cards? Are we making the world a better or worse place? Are we part of the problem or part of the solution to the problem? Oscar Wilde defined a cynic [...]
Let us remember this day in Advent as a reminder of the true spirit of Saint Nicholas—a valiant defender of the faith, a tender-hearted lover of the poor and a kindly, generous soul, who saw that the true message of Christ’s nativity was that unless you become like a little child, you cannot enter the [...]
French composer Guy Ropartz wrote Le Miracle de Saint Nicolas in 1905, based on a text by René Avril. From the Naxos recording of this work: This legend in sixteen scenes introduces the story, familiar to the people of Lorraine, of St Nicholas bringing back to life the three boys murdered and pickled by the [...]