Let’s not forget the reason for the season!
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus
that the whole world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment,
when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.
And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth
to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem,
because he was of the house and family of David,
to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
While they were there,
the time came for her to have her child,
and she gave birth to her firstborn son.
She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger,
because there was no room for them in the inn.Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields
and keeping the night watch over their flock.
The angel of the Lord appeared to them
and the glory of the Lord shone around them,
and they were struck with great fear.
The angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid;
for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy
that will be for all the people.
For today in the city of David
a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.
And this will be a sign for you:
you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes
and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel,
praising God and saying:
“Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
For those of us believe this happened, it wasn’t just an event – it was the most important thing that ever happened. God came down from heaven and became one of us – fully man while remaining fully God. Come down out of a deep concern not for a mass of people, but each one of us, individually.
Many people disdain this notion on grounds of the size of the Universe – “come on, you think God would bother with the people on this bit of dust lost in the wastes of Space?”. Well, yeah. And, indeed, the fact that we’re not finding any life remotely near to us indicates that this mote of dust might be pretty important…perhaps even unique. One thing certain, if there is other life out there, it is so far away we’ll probably never encounter it (we would have heard some sort of intelligible radio transmission if there was anyone within, say, a hundred light years of us). Part of the problem is that people continue to think in human terms – the vastness of Space might contain many billions of planets, none of which have life…which, to us, seems strange. But perhaps God just likes making planets and they are each interesting to Him, even if not to us?
But the main thing, for us, is that event: God made flesh. If you don’t believe it happened, then the whole story is meaningless. If you believe it did, then you’ve opened up your mind to a startling concept: you’re worth something. In fact, worth quite a lot. You’re not a mere cipher. You matter. That, I think, is what really bothers people about the whole story – we don’t want to matter. Well, strictly speaking, we don’t want anyone else to matter. We don’t, that is, want to feel obligated to others (this, “we”, of course applying to the general run of humanity – not those who actually believe). We want a world where we don’t have to give a darn about others…where a “sorry to hear that” is sufficient before we move on to fussing about our own concerns.
The difference is the railroad engineer who drove Jews to the gas chambers and those who tried to stop Hitler…even if it meant not just their own deaths, but the deaths of everyone they knew. You see, a Stauffenberg knew that his life and the life of his wife and children were not more important than everyone else’s. That there was nothing to live for if one stood aside while others suffered. And, of course, Stauffenberg was a devout Christian. He went along with the Nazis as long as he could figuring that the fever would break and an honorable Germany would emerge…but it eventually became clear that the fever wasn’t going to break and action had to be taken…even if totally forlorn action. And so it was, and the world was given a hero for all ages to admire.
It is belief in that event in Bethlehem that makes the difference. Which makes real self-sacrifice even possible. Not the bravery that stands up to an enemy army, but the bravery that stands up to evil, itself, even when there is absolutely no hope you can beat it. Which says, aloud, “I don’t care what you do to me and mine, I am your enemy and will fight you”.
And, also, it lets us know – we can’t lose. To give a minor spoiler about Book X, I put into Fred’s mouth this very idea: that evil, in the end, is nothing. Just stand up to it. It is ok to feel pain. To die. Just don’t give into it. The Life of the World to Come will make all of this as if it has never been. Every tear will be wiped away. That is the most important thing, I think, for us to grasp today – we can’t lose. They will lose. They can’t do otherwise…they believe in nothing. A plague and a nuisance they very much are…but not at all important…unless, by God’s grace, they come to understand that it is Mary, laying her child in a manger, who was central to the most important event that ever happened.
Blogs For Victory 
Merry Christmas Mark and everyone at Blogs for Victory! God bless you! 🎄✝️
May we also put to rest the notion that “Jesus was a refugee” 😂
He never left the Roman Empire … furthermore, He’s not a refugee anywhere, for that matter!
Jesus was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. He was not a refugee and Joseph was an excellent provider. Fight the Left with every fiber of your being … they are Satanic and offer nothing of value to this country or its citizens.
The people who hate religion love trying to cite it to make some godless Lefty point. One of the stupidest is that Jesus was a refugee, though, as you point out, He never left His own country. His parents merely left their home town to travel to Bethlehem to register for the census, as all citizens were asked to register. Key word here—“citizens”.
Saw this posted this morning from a rabid leftist. They are losing their minds and it’s incumbent upon us to make sure they do …
“MAGA Christians” celebrate a Jewish baby born in Judea … a political refugee/immigrant they likely wouldn’t house or feed if he were born today, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric so often promoted in his name.
They are desperate to separate us from our Lord and our President. Yet it only strengthens our resolve
This is classic Lib Lunacy.
(1) Christians have always known that Jesus was born (and died) a Jew. Leftists always seem so proud of themselves for figuring this out and then assuming that it will bother Christians, or has some nefarious hypocritical meaning.
(2) Jesus was not a “political refugee”—he was born when his parents traveled to Bethlehem to participate in the census, which was to count the Roman citizens living in the area. They did not flee to any other country (“refugee”) or just migrate to a different country (“immigrant”) but remained in their own country to participate in a requirement of the citizens of that country.
(3) MAGA is not “anti-immigrant” but merely anti-criminal
(4) While the Left has created the illusionary “anti-immigrant” theme they have forgotten to include the part where “MAGA” allegedly says this invented theme is practiced in the name of Jesus.
In other words they are inherently dishonest and batshit crazy. They actually make the CHOICE to believe this stuff—or, more likely, know it is BS but just love the taste of it and love to spew it.
But leave them to wallow in the foul mess they create and then worship, while we celebrate the birth of Christ.
They don’t get the story, at all – not even as just a story. There was no room for them in the inn – nothing about whether there was room for anyone else. Jesus had to be born at the bottom – God was going to entirely humble Himself.
They sure spend a lot of time ‘splaining us to ourselves. Of course anything they come up with has been viewed through the lens of bigotry and made its way through the filters of rabid Identity “Politics” and irrational loathing of people unmet and ideas assigned though never held.
Merry Christmas all. Jesus is our Lord and Savior and He is actively working. Gen Z is embracing Faith and rejecting the secular and sexual deviant Democrats. Hallelujah. And 2026 will be one of the best economic years ever. Thank you Donald Trump, a fallen man who heard His calling. God Bless everyone, strengthen your Faith this year and cherish your friends and family. And don’t let politics dominate your life.
What a wonderful Christmas present!
Merry Christmas everyone.
Well, a wonderful gift for rational people who love our country and are happy to see it prosper. (“Democrats just watched economic reality obliterate their favorite doomsday talking point.“) It’s just a poke in the eye to those who have been so successfully suckered into abandoning rationality and decency and common sense for the cheap thrills of blind hatred of a man, to the point of hoping that the country under his leadership will somehow suffer and even fail just so they can blame it on him.
Merry Christmas to all, as we celebrate struggling out of the pit created by the Left and look forward to more liberty and prosperity. (I’m not sure what the people of Chicago look forward to, now that they have successfully hampered efforts to protect them from violent thuggery.)
There was a long line at the supermarket yesterday, and we were all wishing each other a Merry Christmas. No one was offended, and one couple commented that they were more optimistic about the future than they had been in a long time. Everyone else agreed.
And another thing, to infer that Jesus was an immigrant/refugee is to completely disrespect Joesph and Mary who were excellent parents. Furthermore, Jesus HONORED His mother and father, as instructed, and obeyed them. A concept lost with liberals who prefer to obey the State.
May God’s blessing shower upon all who believe.
“Don’t be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God.
You will become pregnant, give birth to a son,
and name him Jesus.
He will be a great man
and will be called the Son of the Most High.
The Lord God will give him
the throne of his ancestor David.
Your son will be king of Jacob’s people forever,
and his kingdom will never end.”
Merry Christmas to all of you.
As we celebrate the birth of Christ, this is an interesting perspective.
And here—” If this man really was God’s Son, as He claimed to be, that shifted authority away from the “crooked things” they had anchored themselves to for centuries”-–we have an explanation of the Left’s hatred of and conflict with religion. The Romans feared Judaism because it was a belief system in which the State was not the primary authority, and then Christianity came along as a parallel concept, which is that allegiance to the State always comes in behind that to God.
This is another interesting historical tidbit to put the legend of Christ’s birth into perspective.
“Luke’s account hinges on the single word “inn.” When he explains why Mary and Joseph struggled to find a place to stay, the Greek term he uses is kataluma. Over time, that word has been commonly translated as inn, importing an entire mental picture — a commercial lodging, a keeper, and a refusal at the door.
But kataluma does not mean an inn in that sense. Luke uses a different word elsewhere when he wants to describe a public lodging place. Kataluma is a guest room, typically within a private home.
That distinction matters.
Luke does not say Mary and Joseph were turned away. He says the guest room was already full.
In a small town like Bethlehem, swollen by a census requiring families to return to ancestral homes, this would have been unremarkable. Extended families would have filled every available sleeping space in the homes of families who still lived in the town. Hospitality would have been offered as best it could be managed. What ran out was not goodwill, but room. Like an exended family today coming home for Christmas, people were placed where the host could find space for them.
Once the birth is returned to a private household rather than a roadside inn, the rest of the story begins to realign. The question is no longer why Mary was sent away, but where, within a crowded home, a birth could reasonably take place.”
‘Can You Type?’ The Cult of Intelligence Is Crippling Our Culture is a great indictment of the defects inherent in our worship of credentials over competence. We started to learn this lesson as the consequences of bowing to the assumed authority of the “experts” associated with the Covid Panic started to surface. Suddenly those of out here in Ordinaryland were faced with the ugly and rather frightening proof that many, if not most, of our “experts” had led us astray and put us in danger due to politics or herd mentality or whatever drove them to abandon science for ideology. (And that includes far too many of our doctors.)
I know that, for me, the once-impressive credential of “Harvard study” now gets a “pffftt” from me and I look somewhere else for information or at least for validation.
Excellent article. I found myself nodding all the way through as I recognized descriptions of people I have known and worked with, particularly in the military.
Several comments stood out for me:
“If you are the right kind of smart person, you should not have to demonstrate the basics. Your status is assumed to stand in for competence.
This tendency is especially pronounced in modern liberal elitism, where authority flows from credentialing, abstraction, and verbal fluency rather than from demonstrated stewardship”
………………………..
“we have confused intellectual capacity with authority.”
……………………
Here is the part modern culture consistently misses. Functioning systems require certain critical capacities that rarely impress intellectual gatekeepers:
A very common Liberal comment is “the MAGA types can’t go to college because they’re not smart enough”. They really do believe that their credentials prove their intellectual merit…and that a MAGA person not having the credentials is proof of stupidity. Of course, if a Liberal had any intellectual ability, the first thing understood is that you’re not better than other people.
I recently saw a video of Jessica Tarlov, who routinely exhibits profound stupidity, argue with Senator Kennedy that there is no value in having actual teaching experience to be competent to make decisions about education. Her smug arrogance was almost painful to watch and her worshipful attitude toward credentials was embarrassing. She prostrated herself on the altar of academia and scornfully dismissed Senator Kennedy, and others with teaching experience, as simply not qualified to make those lofty decisions that should be left to their betters.
Thomas Sowell once wrote that an “intellectual” is someone who had never produced anything but ideas—and they don’t even have to be correct. Yet it is a label some revere and flaunt as if it proves some kind of superiority.
And what’s funny is that these days an “intellectual” or someone with advanced degrees, even from once-respected schools like Harvard, don’t have to know anything. They have history degrees but have never studied history. They have advanced degrees in English Literature without ever reading the classics. The scene in “Tombstone” where Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo conversed in Latin was actually representative of a level of education achieved by many across a wide economic range even just 150 years ago and today English majors can’t even diagram a sentence in their native tongue, much less figure out what a homonym is or what to do with that pesky apostrophe (pe’sky apo’strophe).
Yep – and when Doc called Ringo “an educated man”, that’s what he meant – he knew Latin. A person who could merely read and write English was not considered educated (“illiterate” stems from a Latin word for “doesn’t know Latin”). Churchill could never master Latin (or Greek) and so was considered unfit for University…off to Sandhurst and the Army he went! Now, he was actually brilliant – and his mastery of English was supreme – but he was never considered one of the educated elite.
And while Tarlov probably does have some kind of “journalism” degree, she evidently had not done her homework on Senator Kennedy before condescending to him and treating him as an intellectual inferior.
“Sen. Kennedy graduated magna cum laude in political science, philosophy, and economics from Vanderbilt University, was president of his senior class, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was an executive editor of the “Virginia Law Review” and elected to the Order of the Coif. He earned a Bachelor of Civil Law degree with first class honors from Oxford University (Magdalen College) in England, where he studied under Sir Rupert Cross and Sir John H. C. Morris. He has written and published several books and articles on Constitutional law, the Louisiana Products Liability Act, and the Federal Power Commission.
Sen. Kennedy served as an adjunct professor at Louisiana State University’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center from 2002 to 2016. He has regularly volunteered as a substitute teacher in Louisiana public schools.”
It’s only fairly recently that college has been seen as job prep. Aside from a few specific fields—law, medicine, the sciences—very little learned in college is really preparation for a career. Prior to this shift, most occupations were acquired through some form of internship or apprenticeship, where actual practical knowledge was shared, and college was for education. That is, to become familiar with the classic pillars of knowledge, from literary classics to art and history to languages, particularly the classic languages such as Latin or Greek.
We now have people spending (borrowing to spend) tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars and spending years of their lives to acquire pieces of paper attesting to the achievement of a “degree” in something, who are still barely literate, who are ignorant even of the history and structure of government of their own country (many of them serving in Congress) who can’t spell or calculate or even tell time by looking at a clock with hands pointing to numbers.
Our university system is responsible for infantilization of our population, keeping students locked into childhood well into their twenties and sometimes beyond, while enriching academic elites and functioning as political indoctrination tools. In a recent video every college student questioned, and there were several, was unable to correctly answer the question “how many minutes are in a quarter of an hour?” and none could name three continents, though Mexico was mentioned a couple of times.
(I once worked with a bright young woman who had graduated with honors from high school, who had never read a book, couldn’t read a note I left her because she couldn’t read cursive, could only tell time on a digital clock, and was convinced that the lower part of a window frame was the “seal”—because it seals the window. When I finally realized I was hearing her correctly and she really was saying “window seal” as in “I left it on the window seal” and told her it was “window sill” she argued with me, looked it up and was still convinced she was right. She went on to graduate from college with honors, still never reading a book, still unable to read cursive, still only able to tell time on a digital device and still mispronouncing words or just making them up. But she is credentialed.)
There are two phrases that came to mind after reading this article: “Those that can’t, teach;” and “talk the talk vs. walk the walk.” The latter has been around for a loooooong time.
The meme creators must have read the article as well.