501. Happy New Year! Today, January 3, is New Year’s Day!

  Tomorrow, January 4, is New Year’s Day, too… and so are January 5th and 6th and 7th… and even March 25th, for that matter.  In fact, did you know that in America, for over a century, March 25 actually was New Year’s Day. More about that in a minute. Dating of the beginning of […]

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499. Is Christmas a Fairy Tale? Part Two

So Jesus’ birth was the result of Mary’s being raped by a Roman soldier?! That is the suggestion of Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton, University. * The evidence for this is…  You’re right. There isn’t any. As for the Christmas stories?  They, she says, are  only “metaphors”. Metaphors for what? That’s not clear. […]

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497. Nicholas: the Saint who doesn’t seem to have been but actually was and now definitely is

 Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker Bishop of Myra December 6, 343 Saint Nicholas was Bishop of the city of Myra on the south coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey) in the Fourth Century, back in the days when the Greek-speaking world stretched across much of the eastern Mediterranean. * He is perhaps the most popular, most […]

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