Christmas Crib Quotes

He was a baby once. He must have been sweet and clean and his mother kissed his little pink toes. Maybe when it thundered at night she came to his crib and fixed his blanket better and whispered that he mustn't be afraid, that mother was here. Then she picked him up and put her cheek on his head and said that he was her own sweet baby. He might have been a boy like my brother, running in and out of the house and slamming the door. And while his mother scolded him she was thinking that maybe he'll be president some day. Then he was a young man, strong and happy. When he walked down the street, the girls smiled and turned to watch him. He smiled back and maybe he winked at the prettiest one. I guess he must have married and had children and they thought he was the most wonderful papa in the world the way he worked hard and bought them toys for Christmas. Now his children are getting old too, like him, and they have children and nobody wants the old man any more and they are waiting for him to die. But he don't want to die. He wants to keep living even though he's so old and there's nothing to be happy about anymore.

This is the way the wheel turns, coming at last to full circle, with wild as well as tame at he crib; lion and turtle-dove together an barnyard beasts lying down with the fox. For wild and tame are but two hlaves and here, where all begins and ends, everything must be whole. And always, among the sleepers, there must be somebody waking - somewhere, someone, waking and watchful. Or what would happen to the world..?

For what, in actual practice, should the critical, mature modernist Christian do when, for instance, he gathers his children around him to celebrate Christmas? Should he read Luke's Christmas Gospel and sing the Christmas carols as if they were true, even though he believes them to be crude and primitive theology? After all, the rest of his society has no scruples about doing this, the pagans and the department stores. Or if this seems too cynical, too dishonest, ought he rather, in the manner of early socialist Sunday schools, to devise a passionately rationalist catechesis, swap German for German, chant a passage from Bultmann instead of 'Joy to the World!'; ought he rather to gather his little ones about the Crib, light the candles, and read Raymond Brown instead of St. Luke on the virginal conception of Jesus: 'My judgment in conclusion is that the totality of the scientifically controllable evidence leaves an unresolved problem.' How their eyes will shine, how their little hearts will burn within them as they hear these holy words! How touched they will all be as the littlest child reverently places a shining question mark in the empty manger. And how they will rejoice when they find their stockings, which they have hung up to a Protestant parody of a Catholic bishop, stuffed with subscriptions to 'Concilium,' 'Catholic Update,' 'National Catholic Reporter,' and 'The Tablet.

From a theological point of view, Easter is the center of the Church year; but Christmas is the most profoundly human feast of faith, because it allows us to feel most deeply the humanity of God. The crib has a unique power to show us what it means to say that God wished to be “Immanuel”—a “God with us”, a God whom we may address in intimate language, because he encounters us as a child. This makes Christmas a feast that invites us in a special way to meditation, to an internal act of looking at the Word.

Refugee Malcolm Guite  We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,  Or cosy in a crib beside the font,  But he is with a million displaced people  On the long road of weariness and want.  For even as we sing our final carol  His family is up and on that road,  Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,  Glancing behind and shouldering their load.  Whilst

Most of the messaging and chatting I did was in search of answers to questions I had about how to build my own computer, and the responses I received were so considered and thorough, so generous and kind, they’d be unthinkable today. My panicked query about why a certain chipset for which I’d saved up my allowance didn’t seem to be compatible with the motherboard I’d already gotten for Christmas would elicit a two-thousand-word explanation and note of advice from a professional tenured computer scientist on the other side of the country. Not cribbed from any manual, this response was composed expressly for me, to troubleshoot my problems step-by-step until I’d solved them. I was twelve years old, and my correspondent was an adult stranger far away, yet he treated me like an equal because I’d shown respect for the technology. I attribute this civility, so far removed from our current social-media sniping, to the high bar for entry at the time. After all, the only people on these boards were the people who could be there—who wanted to be there badly enough—who had the proficiency and passion, because the Internet of the 1990s wasn’t just one click away. It took significant effort just to log on.

The lambs in their arms were as smooth as mushrooms, the flock at their heels unruffled. And amid all that froth of fleece, white and metrical as soap-suds, there was no sign of a black lamb. What more could one ask, at a children’s Christmas Eve service? Yet I found that I did indeed want more, especially for the children’s sake—faces trodden by crows’-feet, signs of the ferment, one might almost say chaos, that this unprecedented event brought once and ever brings; something of life, even in carven faces, someone out of breath with running, someone stricken with joy. And I dearly wanted a black lamb. For, without him, where are the ninety and nine? Flocks, like families, have need of their black sheep—he carries their sorrow for them. He is the other side of their whiteness. Does nobody understand, I wondered, that a crib without a black lamb is an incomplete statement?

Refugee Malcolm Guite We think of him as safe beneath the steeple, Or cosy in a crib beside the font, But he is with a million displaced people On the long road of weariness and want. For even as we sing our final carol His family is up and on that road, Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel, Glancing behind and shouldering their load. Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled, The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power, And death squads spread their curse across the world. But every Herod dies, and comes alone To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.

The lighted crib glowed in the shadowy chancel like the star of Bethlehem itself, and the aromatic smell of the evergreens added to the spirit of Christmas. Later, the bells would ring out and the winter sunshine would touch the flowers and silver on the altar with brightness. All would be glory and rejoicing, but there was something particularly lovely and holy about these quiet early morning devotions, and the two sisters preferred to attend then, knowing that the rest of the morning would be taken up with the cheerful ritual of Christmas Day cooking.