Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Dickens’ Agnostic Christmas

Brian Sibley surveys the creation and many adaptations of A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol is not about the birth of Jesus. Although Scrooge undergoes a conversion, it is not one of religious faith. Regrets of the past and being forced to confront his inevitable death don’t lead Scrooge to a concern about the afterlife; instead, he wants to make amends and improve the lives of others in the present.

Regarding baby Jesus, Sibley has written a thoughtful and sensitive fantasy interpretation of the event, in Joseph and the Three Gifts: An Angel’s Story.

ABBA Above All

This past week on the DVR I watched the PBS documentary The Eugenics Crusade, showing how the American Eugenics movement contributed to Hitler’s nightmare of a Master Race. Then I watched a PBS fundraiser feature, ABBA Forever: A Celebration. The two programs have a connection in the person of Frida, whose mother bore her as a German soldier’s “Lebensborn” baby, during the Nazi occupation of Norway.

Anni-Frid Lyngstad

Speaking of PBS, that’s where A Charlie Brown Christmas can be watched tonight. Quite a switch from decades of airing on commercial TV. And with that comment, this posts ticks three of my blog categories.