Thank you Chris.
And have a Merry Christmas yourself.

Marie

Chris – a very merry Christmas to you today. We are snowed-in up here in South Dakota with the worst snowstorm/blizzard in many years, so we have agreed to move Christmas to Sunday so we can spend Saturday digging out…if it stops by then. I think we’re sitting in about 8-10″ now with another 10-12″ predicted. Merry Christmas to you all we sure got a white one up here!

Merry Christmas to all – may the blessings of Christ be with you on this joyous day! “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

We’re having a wonderful, *rare* white Christmas here in Dallas – 3 inches of snow!

“και ο λογος σαρξ εγενετο και εσκηνωσεν εν ημιν…”
“et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis…”
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

May each and everyone of you have a blessed Feast of the Nativity.

Merry Christmas, Chris. Thank you for all you do, and all the crap you put up with from all of us strong-willed people endowed with a keyboard.

*rare* white Christmas here in Dallas

RARE?????

Bill (not IB). I’m nearly 58 and never seen this before. In ’71 or ’72, I came out of Midnight Mass and it was snowing, but all gone by morning. And we had an ice storm a few years ago. But never snow.

I wish I could insert a picture of my black Rottie in the back yard this morning.

And Merry Christmas!
Again!

FW Ken,

Please understand – I’m a “furriner’ (transplant from Yankee territory, but I promise I’ve changed my ways….) and all those I had talked with in the past 16 hours are non-Native Texans; everyone seemed to know “someone” who had seen a Christmas snowfall here. I didn’t realize the full significance of this event until I got around to reading the newspaper about an hour ago – since weather records have been kept in DFW (1898) there has NEVER been a measurable Christmas Eve snowfall.

We got a little snow here but we weren’t hit anywhere near as bad as other people seem to have been. Covered the ground a bit and that was pretty much it.

Bill – I have no problem with Yankees… heck, some of my best friends are Yankees…

But Dallas! Dude, you live in Dallas!

Come on, FW Ken, you know what they say about Dallas:

Fort Worth—where the West begins
Dallas—where the East fizzles out

I remember coming out of church one year around midnight and there was a light flurry of snow, but that was it until this year.

May I ask you to pray a little for my parents? My mother died October 9, after a long struggle with cancer; she was 68 years old. A couple of days ago we discovered that also my father, who’s 71, has a widespread cancer attacking his bones. Both of them gave up their faith in the sixties.

May Christmas bring light to all of us. Thank you Chris and all other readers here, God bless you and your families.

Will do, Paolo. I’m very sorry to hear about your mother.

As for Xmas snow. A few here sitting in Canada, yes Canada, in what is called the Golden Horseshoe of the western end of Lake Ontario are still staring out at rain and brown grass. Will it ever snow?

FW Ken,

Does it help that I’ve never actually lived in the “City of Dallas” – I was formerly in Wylie, now Richardson?

Snowy and cold here in Calgary – we left Inghamville for the holy-days. Went with family to a local liberal-leaning Anglican church, one of the largest and most beautiful in the city. It was just over half full. Meanwhile St. Johns Shaugnessy, which may be losing its building to Ingham & Co., is packed to the gills and turns people away from all three Christmas Eve services every year.

The sermon here in Calgary was focused on “what did you come here to see?” It started with a cheap jab at theologians who think that the baby was born for our salvation. Ended with the suggestion that we are all looking for a baby in a manger which means, among ather things, environmental conciousness (because the ox and ass were also at the stable, so we have to look after them.)

The prayers of the people were all focused on asking God to give us as individuals more spiritual stuff.

I’m missing my ACNA home parish, as you can tell.

Merry Christmas y’all. You guys in Dallas take comfort in the knowledge that the snow is an illusion, and cow-farts are actually making your city warmer each winter (bovi-centric global warming).

Paolo -

Prayers for your family, Paolo: might I suggest praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy for your father? We used to sing a song from the scripture based on the Lord’s mercy:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning, new every morning:
Great is thy Faithfulness, O Lord,
Great is thy Faithfulness.

We hosted a trio of clergy for an Anglican Essentials conference a few years ago and Fr. Joe told us a story about his Christmas sermon struggles. As the story goes he was sitting at his desk trying to prepare a sermon that would be fresh and he couldn’t come up with anything. So, he phoned his mentor, then Bishop Terry Buckle of the Yukon and told of his problem and asked “How do I say something new in my sermon?” Bishop Terry was silent for a moment and then said, “So why do you need to say anything new?”

A few days later when he was opening up the hymn book and it opened immediately to “Tell Me the Old, Old Story”. At this point Fr. Joe said that he told God, “OK I think I got it” and his sermon was mostly readings from Scripture, with the minimum explanation possible.

Having heard Fr. Joe preach when I’ve had to be in his city on business, I’d have liked to have heard that sermon.

Down here in the Dominican Republic a nice tropical breeze is wafting through my apartment. We had rain on Wednesday and even the desert was green as I crossed it driving to two of the churches I serve. I can’t complain too much about the sermon. A lay reader was leading the service and when we arrived at sermon time I was informed that I was the preacher.
God came through.

Thank you Chris, I didn’t imagine it’s so painful.

Father Ken, I’ll follow your suggestion, thank you. Remember my father in your prayers, because he’s really on the wrong track and sometimes he talk about suicide.

I lost my mom in 1992. You eventually learn to live with it but it never really goes away.