Issue 103 Christmas: The Wonder of the Season

What's inside

Christmas Countdown

When does the holiday season really start?

Elesha Coffman

St. Lucy’s Day

How the Italians and Scandinavians brought us the sweetest holiday celebration of them all

Carla Barnhill

Hail Mary

Her moment of obedience triggered two millennia of reverence

David Lyle Jeffrey

Mary, the Sinless?

A number of venerable beliefs about Mary originated in a little-known book, the Gospel of James

David Lyle Jeffrey

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

The story behind the season’s most somber hymn

Jennifer Woodruff Tait

A Cold Coming We Had of It

T.S. Eliot and the journey of conversion

Carla Barnhill

That Most Familiar Story

How certain details of the nativity became tradition

Sarah E. Dahl

Advent: Close Encounters of a Liturgical Kind

'Tis the season when even the free-ranging revivalist pulls up a chair to the table of historic liturgy

Chris Armstrong

The Real Twelve Days of Christmas

Celebrating Christ's birth with saints of the faith from Christmas Day until Epiphany

Edwin and Jennifer Woodruff Tait
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