Across the Americas, stories abound of enslaved peoples utilizing the small window of “a little restricted liberty” afforded by the Christmas season to escape bondage.
President Obama has been saying ‘Merry Christmas’ for the last eight years… even in Hawaiian.
Bernie Sanders Knocks Donald Trump's Scapegoating. Why Einstein Hated Quantum Mechanics. Merry Confederate Christmas. How Girls Who Code Is Bridging The Gender Gap In Tech. Movie: Where to Invade Next.
South Carolina Representative Chris Corley sends out a provocative Christmas card featuring the Confederate flag, and a cabal of Southern gentlemen shows its support.
Christmas is a commercial, obnoxious holiday. But the so-called golden rule — do unto others — that is ostensibly a core principle of every major religion, well that is a reality we have never approached, but should aim for.
The tale of the 1914 Christmas Truce survived through the letters and photos of soldiers who, along 600 miles of trenches, suspended war and shared Christmas - with their enemy. The war to end all wars did the opposite, sowing seeds of future ones. Industrial warfare - bombing cities; using chemical poisons; and a punitive peace treaty, with the winners dividing up the empires of the losers - all but guaranteed that future conflicts would be settled by military force.
Woody Guthrie's Jesus Christ. Playing for Change's Low Down Dirty Christmas. Jesus: The Missing Years. The Barcelona Gypsy Klezmer Orchestra's Shalom Alechem. Movie: The Gospel According to St. Matthew.
Military chaplains seem to be another cog in the apparatus of making war maximally effective. Christian chaplains seem to not pay much attention to the Ten Commandments either, especially the ones that say "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's oil". 99 years ago one of the most unusual aberrations in the bloody history of warfare - never allowed to be repeated again - occurred.
Son House was a preacher before becoming a seminal figure in the development of blues. Here he creates short, vivid portraits of church-goers. Find more Alt-Xmas music here.
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