Secondly, click here to visit a website that some friends designed.  It shows off the greenest of villes, the city in which I live and one that you should visit.

Last week my wife purchased three boxes of books at an auction.  In the boxes were four of a five volume set of children’s literature called The Children’s Hour.  It occurs to me that children were treated with greater respect back then than in much of the literature meant for them today.  Authors in the 1950s tried to “connect” with the reader as much as authors today, but the effort has an entirely different attitude.  Whereas the common ground today amongst author and child is immaturity, the authors of yesterday found maturity to be the common ground.  The above poem describes a very simple and profound moment in a way that doesn’t look down on children.  It assumes that they are human beings with a cache of relate-able profound experiences.  It doesn’t assume that they need jokes about yellow snow or exposed underpants or romanticized adolescent sex to capture their attention.  To me the subtext is, “I am a human being and I had this sharply realized experience.  Maybe you would enjoy hearing it since you too are a human being.”

It is said that folks in the Dark Ages looked at the ruins of the Roman Empire and had no idea how such things were constructed.  While it isn’t fair to say that we are in the Dark Ages of children’s literature, it may be fair to say its Golden Age was the 1950s.

The death of Christopher Hitchens yesterday has saddened many Atheists and perhaps many more Christians.

Mr. Hitchens was a man of many contradictions.  He was a left-wing Trotskyite who defended neo-cons forcefully and eloquently during the Iraq war.  He was an ardent Atheist whose name means “Christ-bearer.”  He was moralistic in his writing yet without warrant for that moralism in his philosophy.  He challenged Americans to think about ultimate things even as he denied that there were such categories as ultimate things.

Six or seven years ago one was likely to hear an Atheist say that they didn’t believe in God anymore than they believed in the tooth-fairy.  The implication was that belief in God was harmless immaturity.  However the New Atheists have culturally advanced very far the idea that belief in God (particularly the Christian God) is not only false, but immoral.  Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens spent a great deal of energy writing books in an attempt to suppress Christianity in the public square.  While these books have not proved philosophically deep (I’m not saying they’re as sloppy as someone like Bill Maher, merely that they avoid Christian Theism’s best arguments), still the work of the New Atheist has provided a veneer of  intellectual cover for people who enjoy mocking Christians on facebook and youtube comments sections.

At the conclusion of Collision, a documentary featuring a series of debates between Douglas Wilson and Christopher Hitchens, Mr. Hitchens once again reveals his penchant for contradiction.  He relates a conversation with Richard Dawkins about the eradication of religion:

“And then at one point, I think this is not on camera, I said if I could convert everyone in the world, not convert, if I could convince them to be a non-believer and I’d really done brilliantly, and there’s only one left.  One more, and then it’d be done.  There’d be no more religion in the world.  No more deism, theism.  I wouldn’t do it.

“And Dawkins said, ‘What do you mean you wouldn’t do it?’

“I said, ‘ I don’t quite know why I wouldn’t do it.’

“And it’s not just because there’d be nothing left to argue with and no one left to argue with.  It’s not just that.  Though it would be that.  Somehow if I could drive it out of the world, I wouldn’t.

“And the incredulity with which he (Richard Dawkins) looked at me stays with me still.  I’ve got to say.”

Christopher Hitchens, the man whom God used to challenge Christians so that they might not get too comfortable, will be sorely missed.

Douglas Wilson wrote this honest summary today in the pages of Christianity Today:

“We leave the soul of Christopher Hitchens (and he did have a soul, despite all his arguments) in the hands of God, who will do nothing but right.”

This year’s Christmas Postcard owes much to my wife.  During the latter half of November we watched numerous (it felt like numerous) romantic comedies.  All the “follow your heart,” “believe in the power of your dreams,” “thinking is bad” moralism engulfed me, and I felt the need to combat the growing pressure of 90′s romantic comedies lest I should implode.  In order to press against the crushing embrace of women’s fantasy, I watched episodes of Surviving the Cut and Special Ops.  I actually completed this card while re-listening to Jack Coughlin’s excellent sniper memoir Shooter.  Not surprisingly, Santa ended up with a knife in his teeth.

This bearded president wanted to guard against the dishonorable drunken behavior on display at other Washington gatherings, so President Hayes and his wife kept an alcohol-free White House.  He spent the money normally used for alcohol on other entertainments for his guests, but this did not prevent his Secretary of State from teasing that at the White House “water flowed like wine.”

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