Around this time of year, so many people tell me how they find the gift-giving process stressful and/or downright unpleasant. (Not everybody does, mind you, but some definitely do.) There’s got to be a better way to enjoy Christmas! I made this point in an article several years ago and was amazed at the response I received – all positive – when people took a more objective approach to holiday shopping.

Year after year, more and more people tell me, “The holidays are so stressful! Shopping is such a chore!” But does it really have to be that way? Have we forgotten about that wonderful thing called … choice? Believe it or not, we have the power to choose how much holiday anxiety we endure. Specifically, we can choose to limit, or not to engage in, the exchange of gifts. We’re free to tell significant others, friends and family that this is the year to control the stressful search for (what we hope will be) the “perfect gift.” Or, we can dive headlong into the giving and receiving. But if that causes more stress than happiness, then we’re free to choose an alternative.

Nothing is more festive than lots of brightly wrapped presents under the tree. But in the interest of stress reduction, you can propose other options. For example, suggest that each person draw a single name for which they will buy. Some large families and offices do this all the time. Or what about a memorable experience like a cruise, a trip or an evening at one of our great restaurants – anything that isn’t doomed to collect dust in the attic.

I’m not advocating any particular way to exchange gifts. What I am saying is that we have a choice. Psychologically speaking, the biggest problem is that too many people approach the holidays as a duty. They feel they must buy gifts for everyone – all or nothing. Sadly, quality often gives way to quantity. Are you motivated to buy expensive gifts for your kids because you know they’ll appreciate them all year long? Or (be honest, now…) are you trying to impress everybody else?

“Materialism,” business and advertising get the blame for much of this, but advertising can’t do anything more than momentarily intensify a desire to buy. But we still retain the power to choose. Well-run businesses respond to what the majority demands, and many people simply don’t question what they want. They just do it — often with resentment and bottled-up anger.

If you find yourself thinking, “I just can’t do it this year,” ask yourself, “How do I really want to handle gifts? Am I truly satisfied when it’s all over?” Think about last year: If you liked everything the way it was, then know that all the hassle will be worth it. Don’t rush to label something a hassle that is actually something you treasure.

Several years ago, during a particularly busy pre-holiday time, I agonized over the decision to suggest to family and friends that we suspend gift giving in favor of experiences together, like dinner at a nice restaurant or a day trip to a nearby city. After I worked up the nerve to hear what I was sure would be, “No gifts!? Horror of horrors, it’s Scrooge!”, I was astounded by everyone’s reaction. They loved it! The stress of battling traffic for a gift that would end up languishing in a dark corner (or furtively returned) was wearing on everybody. I just happened to be the one to bring it up. We still buy gifts for one another during the year — retailers here at the beach always have unique and unusual items — making the season more fun and less frenetic.

Why approach the holidays as a duty? If the season feels that way to you, then something is wrong. You might be surprised at how many of your friends and family feel the same way. Create a plan and exercise your power to choose. Then guiltlessly enjoy whatever makes you happy.

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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.”

We notice all the references to Davidic covenant fulfillment: Bethlehem, David’s birthplace; Joseph “of the house and lineage of David”; the presence of shepherds, who remind us of David the Shepherd.

St. Luke takes pains to date the event by secular history (Caesar Augustus … Quirinius, etc.). He does not intend to record myths and fables, but real human events. As John also says, that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands … we proclaim to you” (1 John 1:1). Disbelieve if you will, but Luke and John intend to record history.

There is a well-known historical issue with the dating of Quirinius, who according to some historical records seems not yet to have been governor of Syria at the time of Jesus birth. But the Greek of this passage can possibly be rendered, “This was the census prior to Quirinius being governor of Syria,” in which case the chronological problem is solved (so F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?). There are other possible solutions (see Hahn and Mitch, Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, excursus ad loc.).

“⁶As many have noted, the name “Bethlehem” is literally “House of Bread.” Thus it is appropriate that the “Bread of Life” should be born in the “House of Bread” and laid in a feeding trough (a “manger” from “mangé,” “to eat”). We will feed on Him in this Mass.

This chapter is an embellished story, so do not take it as inspired by GOD. I wrote this for entertainment, and thus it is but a figment of my active imagination mixed with some facts surrounding the times, the places and the characters.

I ask that you allow yourself to truly see what it must have been like for a husband and his 16 year old pregnant wife as they traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem in the week leading up to the birth of their first child. They were two humans with thoughts, feelings, and faith in the One and only Living God who promised them their child would be special. Here are some of the particulars involved that they had to face.

I Offer These Facts To Consider About Mary and Joseph’s Journey to Bethlehem, Before My Story Begins

We live at a time when children are born in sanitized hospital rooms with the best of care, before and after the mother gives birth. When we hear of stories of women giving birth at home, or alongside the road where the car had to pull over because the child would not wait, we are captivated and amazed of such a thing happening in today’s world.

Yet, for the vast majority of man’s history, women have given birth in conditions we would not expect our pet animals to give birth in. So when you consider what Mary had to endure in her last week leading up to the birth of her first child, I want you to consider the following. Then maybe, just maybe, you will look at the story of Christmas a bit differently than you have in the past.

When you consider that Luke was a Doctor, it kind of makes sense that his version of the Gospel is the only one that tells the story of the birth of Christ. It makes even more sense when you consider that Luke was not just a good friend and traveling companion, but he was also the Apostle Paul’s Doctor. Another point of consideration is that, in Paul’s letter to the Galatians he wrote that he did not receive the Gospel from man, but from Christ Himself. So who better to know the events leading up to the birth of Jesus, than the man He shared it with.

“But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
(Galatians 1:11-12)

I ask that you allow yourself to truly see what it must have been like for a 16 year old pregnant wife and her husband in the week leading up to the birth of their first child. They were two humans with thoughts, feelings, and faith in their God who promised them their child would be special. Here are some of the particulars involved that they had to face.

“And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the Inn.”
(Luke 2:7)

Victoria Coates is a former Deputy National Security Adviser in the first Trump administration. Now she is the Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. She has an interesting take on what is not the “Palestinian problem” (with its implied “two-state solution”), but rather, the “Palestinians’ problem,” the problem, that is, of failing to recognize the significance of their repeated defeats. For nobody will tell it to them straight. She does. More of her discussion can be found here: “Victoria Coates: Palestinians lost battle with Israel – ‘someone has to tell them,’” by Maayan Hoffman, ILTV, December 3, 2024:

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict ended decades ago with the country’s founding and its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, according to former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates.

Speaking to ILTV on Monday at the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, she said the Palestinians were never told they lost. Instead, “they were encouraged, particularly after the Iranian Revolution, to continue this self-defeating, suicidal, genocidal [behavior] we saw on October 7.”

“Someone has to have the nerve to say to the Palestinians, we are not negotiating a ceasefire, we’re negotiating terms” to end the conflict, she added.

Coates, an evangelical Christian and staunch supporter of the Jewish state has visited Israel many times. She has held several key political leadership roles, including serving in the Department of Energy, where she advised Secretary Dan Brouillette on national security issues and acted as his representative in the Middle East and North Africa.

Today, she serves as Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. She recently published a book, The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel—and America—Can Win, which focuses on October 7 and why America must stand with Israel.

She said the possibilities for the Palestinians, if they were to disarm and accept defeat, are abundant….

What would that mean? It would mean they would have, as Prime Minister Netanyahu likes to say, “all the powers they need to govern themselves, and none of the powers to harm Israel.”

Coates told ILTV she believes Trump would act decisively to expand the Abraham Accords, including securing a Saudi deal….

Is an Israel-Saudi “normalization deal” even possible? The Saudis insist that first a Palestinian state must be created. The Israelis are not about to see themselves squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, in order to accommodate a 23rd Arab state that would be used to launch future attacks on the single Jewish state. Let me repeat it one more time: As Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, Israel wants the Palestinian Arabs to have all the powers to govern themselves, but none of the powers to harm Israel.

Trump will likely operate with an “unabashedly pro-Israel stance” because he understands this approach is in America’s best interest.

“I’m a Christian … but that’s not why I am here and not why I wrote the book,” Coates emphasized. “I wrote the book because the United States, we need Israel in the region, we need Israel locally, to be a partner and ally to us.”

She highlighted Trump’s nomination of former Governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel as an example of his pro-Israel policies and his understanding of the evangelical community that played a significant role in his election.

“You would assume that Israel would want a Jewish ambassador. But I think the enthusiasm for Governor Mike Huckabee is palpable,” Coates said. “I think he can help bridge those two worlds and not make this a Jewish or Christian issue. This is an American issue. There are hundreds of millions of Americans who care deeply about Israel.”

Listen up, Palestinian Arabs. You lost. Get over it.

A person remarked that when 80% of your counties want to secede, it is only a question of time before they secede.

If Oregon does not address its questionable elections and give the rural voters a voice or representation in the Oregon State government, then secession will be the only route the disenfranchised rural Oregon voters will have to pursue. The Greater Idaho movement is already contacting the incoming Trump administration to discuss allowing them to split from Oregon. We may soon see Oregon split between east and west counties. This maybe the end point of a Democrat power dynasty in Oregon and a new ascendancy of conservative Idaho.” [from The American Thinker]

THIS is the way to beat the leftists. Not just in Oregon.

********************

All we’ve heard for years is that you’re a “threat to democracy” merely for disagreeing with the Biden regime, since the Biden regime was (supposedly) voted in by a majority. This time, Trump was voted in by a majority, and Biden does everything humanly impossible to undermine his policies even before Trump enters the White House. Does this make Biden a “threat to democracy” too?

Silence.

According to a federal survey of school leaders, 40% of students in the nation’s public schools were behind grade level in one or more subjects at the beginning of the school year.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) announced its findings this week that the percentage of students school leaders estimated to be behind where they should be was down 7% from the 2022-23 school year but still 8% higher than before the pandemic.

School leaders told the federal education statistics agency in October that over a third of students were behind entering the 2024-25 school year. NCES data shows students are farther behind than before state and local governments closed schools during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Before the pandemic, school leaders estimated that 32% of students were behind grade level in at least one area. In 2021-22, it rose to 45%, and in the 2022-23 school year, it reached 47%.

The data shows school leaders were more likely to say students from low-income families and in schools where the population was 76% or more students of color were behind, with 52% of students estimated to be behind where they should be.

School leaders located in cities and at schools with fewer than 300 students reported that 48% of students were lagging academically.

The data follows with broader student academic achievement data and other metrics that show the effects of the pandemic closures were not equitable to minority students, who suffered more significant declines in academic achievement.

The survey also found that students were more likely to be estimated to be behind in specific subject areas studied.

“Ninety-eight percent of public schools reported that at least some students were behind grade level in mathematics and English or language arts,” the NCES said in its findings.

School leaders said 76% of students were behind in the sciences, and 55% were behind in social studies.

Peace is not at hand in the Middle East, and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu remains determined to expand the war. Syria’s de facto partition into Israeli and Turkish territories is the prelude to wider war with Iran. As the Times of Israel reported last week, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has “continued to increase its readiness and preparations” for “potential strikes in Iran.”

Netanyahu’s top priority is the destruction of Iran before Russia wraps up its victory in Ukraine and Syria becomes a new battleground for Turks and Israelis. It’s not simply the end of Washington’s “rules-based international order.” It’s the onset of chaos. Israeli forces and Turkish auxiliaries (i.e. the Islamist terrorists who sacked Syria) are already staring at each other across a demarcation line that runs east–west just south of Damascus. Netanyahu harbors no illusions about the conflict between Ankara’s long-term strategic aims in the region and Jerusalem’s determination to claim the Syrian spoils of war.

In addition to serious financial trouble and societal discontent on the home front, President-elect Donald Trump now confronts the dangerous distraction of wars he did not start, wars that will bring his administration and his country no strategic benefit. America’s underwriting of Netanyahu’s expanding war in the Middle East will endanger U.S. national security and guarantee that Washington, its armed forces, and the U.S. economy will be hostage to whatever strategic direction Netanyahu decides to take.

Starting the war sooner, rather than later, is critical for Netanyahu. War with Iran presents Trump with a strategic fait accompli. In case Trump decides to distance the United States from another bloodbath in the Middle East, Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran and Turkey’s potential confrontation with Israel will make disengagement impossible.

American policy planners need to understand the larger context in which this is all unfolding—and why a war on Iran will ultimately bring us and our alleged Israeli friends to grief. The principal aim of U.S. foreign policy planners ought to be the adaptation of the American economy and military establishment to the multipolar world and the development of new markets, not new enemies. Washington’s refusal to acknowledge the fundamental shifts in power and wealth lie at the heart of much of the Biden administration’s foreign policy failure.

A successful management of change would avoid a conflict with Iran; it would peacefully reconcile competing claims to regional hegemony, as the Chinese recently did with their brokering of the historic rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would revitalize such multilateral organizations as the UN Security Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. These actions would cultivate the emergence of new constellations of power along the lines of Metternich and Castlereagh’s 1815 Concert of Europe. Just as no question of strategic security in Europe can be solved without Russian participation, Washington cannot create stability in the Middle East by unconditionally backing Israel’s territorial ambitions.

An American failure to manage its own transition to multipolarity will create more chaos and ignite a major war in the Middle East, not to mention a full blown war with Russia, and, eventually, China. An outlook that prioritizes avoiding conflict, not starting new conflicts, must replace nearly three decades of feckless leadership in foreign affairs. New thinking in defense and foreign policy should rank diplomacy and peaceful cooperation first over the use of military power.

Bonaparte quipped that in war, truth is the first casualty. Nothing has changed since then. Washington is a veritable fountainhead of lies feeding an unending stream of false narratives regarding the true character of the jihadist hordes raging across Syria. For our purposes, however, it is important to note the alignment of powers behind the Islamist factions now pillaging and terrorizing Syria.

Washington seems blithely oblivious to Syria’s destruction and the emergence of joint Israeli-Turkish hegemony across the Near East. The disintegration of Syria does, however, open up a short window of opportunity for Tel Aviv to attack Iran. As the Times of Israel report noted, while previously the “IAF would not fly directly over Damascus when carrying out strikes on Iran-linked targets in the capital, it now can.”

Netanyahu believes he has the wind at his back: Emboldened by the collapse of the Assad regime, he will turn his attention to Lebanon, southern Syria, and the West Bank. One predictable consequence of an attack on Iran will be a solidifying of the Chinese-brokered Iran-Saudi rapprochement—and a hardening of the blocs in the Greater Middle East, which will see Iran, backed by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, set against a temporary Israel-Turkish bloc backed by Washington and its European vassals.

Iran is not Iraq: At 90 million people, it is double Iraq’s population, has a more developed economy, and has more powerful allies than Saddam Hussein ever did. Contrary to neoconservative expectations, there are no cake-walks in the greater Middle East.

The only certainty amid the chaos is that, thanks to the connivance of Biden, Netanyahu, and Erdogan, a wider war in the greater Middle East is only just beginning. It is one we will come to regret.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.”

— Ben Franklin