Spiritual Quote of the Day (Henri Nouwen, on Why God Sent Jesus to Us)

“Wherever we go we see divisions among people—in families, communities, cities, countries, and continents. All these divisions are tragic reflections of our separation from God. The truth that all people belong together as members of one family under God is seldom visible. Our sacred task is to reveal that truth in the reality of everyday life. Why is that our task? Because God sent Jesus to reconcile us with God and to give us the task of reconciling people with one another.”— Dutch-born Catholic priest, theologian, psychologist and writer Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), Bread For The Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (1997)

TV Quote of the Day (‘SNL,’ on Why Santa Might Have Been Watching the Show)

Michael Che [pictured]: “Now, you told me you wanted to share your Christmas wish list.”

Michael’s “12-year-old nephew,” Tyson [played by Kam Patterson]: “I sure do, but Uncle Che, do you think Santa is watching SNL?”

Michael: “I mean, I think Santa’s watching. He’s over 100 and white, so probably.”—Saturday Night Live, Season 50, Episode 9, original air date Dec. 20, 2025, “Weekend Update: Michael Che’s Nephew Threatens Santa” 

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Leo XIV, Calling for ‘Hearts Attentive and Vigilant As We Await Jesus’)

“Let us be careful not to get caught up in frenetic activity in preparing for the feast, which would lead us to experience it in a superficial way and leave room for disappointment. Instead, let us take the time to make our hearts attentive and vigilant as we await Jesus, so that His loving presence may become the treasure of our lives and hearts forever.”— Pope Leo XIV quoted by Isabella H. de Carvalho, “Pope on Advent: Prepare for Christ's Coming, Don’t Get Lost in Frenetic Activity,” Vatican News, Dec. 17, 2025

Quote of the Day (Megan Nolan, on Going Home to Ireland for the Holidays)

“I go home for the holidays in Ireland, and whether you like it or not, going back to the place you were raised and known best in the world only once a year tends to invite focused reflection on what is actually taking place in your life. People keep asking you about it, for one thing: what you’re up to, how the boyfriend is, what you’ve got planned for next year. There were only so many times I could respond to those questions by saying I was fairly desperate to move to New York, actually, and the boyfriend is fine but we hadn’t discussed the prospect of me moving, funnily enough, but no doubt things would resolve in some way without me having to take any action. The encroaching reality of another year was too much to ignore. The general melancholy I always feel around Christmas—a time that compels me helplessly to contemplate how many more I will get to share with my family—was joined by another, more specific, sadness: the relationship I was in had come to an end.”— Irish novelist and essayist Megan Nolan, “Merry Ex-Mas,” The Financial Times (“How To Spend It” supplement), November 2025 

The image accompanying this post, showing mid-morning crowds on Grafton Street in Dublin, Ireland, was taken Dec. 19, 2005, by Irish typepad.

TV Quote of the Day (Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, on How ‘The Higher Life of Man is God’)

“The higher life of man is God. And if man is ever to be lifted up, God in some way must come down to man.”—Venerable Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), Life Is Worth Living, Season 4, Episode 112, “The True Meaning of Christmas,” original air date 1956

Quote of the Day (Lillian Stone, on Family Relations at Christmastime)

“Your extended family includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. It also includes Enzo, your cousin's cousin's cousin, who owns the Italian place down the street and proudly displays a signed photo of Bernadette Peters above the cash register. Every time you walk by with your dog, he gives you a wink and screams, ‘Proud home of preferred manicotti of Bernadette Peters!’ Enzo, too, is family.”— Humor writer and journalist Lillian Stone, “Shouts and Murmurs: Obscure Familial Relations, Explained for the Holidays,” The New Yorker, Dec. 9, 2024

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Ignatius of Antioch, on Jesus and the Star over Bethlehem)

“How, then, was [God] manifested to the world? A star shone forth in heaven above all the other stars, the light of which was inexpressible, while its novelty struck men with astonishment. And all the rest of the stars, with the sun and moon, formed a chorus to this star, and its light was exceedingly great above them all. And there was agitation felt as to whence this new spectacle came, so unlike to everything else [in the heavens]. Hence every kind of magic was destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappeared; ignorance was removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life. And now that took a beginning which had been prepared by God. Henceforth all things were in a state of tumult, because He meditated the abolition of death.”—Syrian-born early Christian writer and martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 50 AD-108 AD), “Epistle to the Ephesians”

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Fyodor Dostoevsky, on Children and ‘Christ's Christmas Tree’)

“'This is Christ's Christmas Tree,' they tell him. 'Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day, for the little children who have no tree of their own...' And he discovered that all these boys and girls had been children just like himself, but some of them had been frozen in the baskets in which they had been abandoned, on the staircases in front of the doors of Petersburg officials; others had been boarded out to Finnish women by the foundlings’ hospital, and been suffocated;… yet others had choked on the poisonous air in third-class railway carriages; but now they were all here, all of them like angels, all of them in Christ’s case, and he himself was one of them, holding out his hands to them and blessing them and their sinful mothers... And the mothers of these children were all standing there too, to one side, and weeping; each one knew her little boy or girl, and the children would fly up to them and kiss them, and dry their tears with their little hands, and beg them not to cry, because they were so happy here."—Russian novelist and short-story writer Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1880), “The Heavenly Christmas Tree,” originally published in 1876, republished in A Bad Business: Essential Stories, translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater (2021)

Quote of the Day (Joe Queenan, Imagining a Tourist Rating for the North Pole)

“The North Pole (3.5) [out of a possible 5 stars]. Got all the way up here and couldn’t find the damn thing. Poorly signposted, no public restrooms, no gift shop, too cold. Unless you really, really want to shoot a polar bear, I wouldn’t recommend it.” —Joe Queenan, “Moving Targets: My Candid Reviews of the World’s Wonders,” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 15-16, 2016

No wonder Santa wants to get out of there every December!

Photo of the Day: Christmas at St. Cecilia’s Church, Englewood NJ

Yesterday I attended a Christmas vigil Mass at my parish church, St. Cecilia’s in Bergen County, NJ. For me and my family—as well as, I suspect, for more than a few of my readers—this venerable, beautiful building holds a lifetime of memories.

Those memories continued to warm my heart even on a hideously cold day outside.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Henry Newman, on the ‘Humble,’ ‘Ordinary’ Lot of Jesus at the Incarnation)

“We are reminded that though this life must ever be a life of toil and effort, yet that, properly speaking, we have not to seek our highest good. It is found, it is brought near us, in the descent of the Son of God from His Father's bosom to this world…. No longer need men of ardent minds weary themselves in the pursuit of what they fancy may be chief goods; no longer have they to wander about and encounter peril in quest of that unknown blessedness to which their hearts naturally aspire, as they did in heathen times. The text speaks to them and to all, ‘Unto you," it says, ‘is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.’

“Nor, again, need we go in quest of any of those things which this vain world calls great and noble. Christ altogether dishonoured what the world esteems, when He took on Himself a rank and station which the world despises. No lot could be more humble and more ordinary than that which the Son of God chose for Himself.”—English theologian, writer, and Catholic convert St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), “Sermon 17: Religious Joy,” in Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 8 (1908), in The Newman Reader

The image accompanying this post, The Nativity, is a 1523 oil on panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Lorenzo Lotto (c. 1480-1556/1557).

Appreciations: Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Markheim,’ on Christmas Crime and Conscience

“As he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise. Poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.” —Scottish fiction writer, poet and essayist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), “Markheim” (1885), collected in The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887)

Certain filmmakers gravitate towards projects that run perversely counter to the traditional good cheer of Christmas. They don’t offer the kind of well-made crime fiction that Dame P.D. James offered late in her illustrious career in The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories, nor even the ghost stories that Canadian man of letters Robertson Davies offered Massey College students each Christmas (later collected in High Spirits). Nor do these dark cinematic visions turn towards redemption, as with A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life.

No, these films—“thrillers” or “horror films” would be putting it mildly—have something infinitely more gruesome in mind. You can tell by even by their titles: Violent Night; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Christmas Evil; The Gingerdead Man; and—God help us!— 13 Slays Until X-Mas.

Robert Louis Stevenson (in the image accompanying this post, a painting by John Singer Sargent) might be regarded as the literary ancestor of this species of renegade auteur. While he rejected the strict Calvinism and even Christian faith of his parents, their pessimistic outlook on the sin-touched nature of mankind left its mark in such macabre masterpieces by their son as “Thrawn Janet,” “The Body Snatcher,” and, of course, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

Like “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” the lesser-known “Markheim” is a study in dualism featuring a character riven by internal conflict and ultimately driven to violence. But, while respectable Henry Jekyll finds his evil doppelganger with a concoction from his chemistry lab, Markheim faces what may be a considerably more sinister force from the outside.

The voice heard in the first paragraph is not Markheim, however, but a curio dealer’s, heavy with dark insinuation:

"Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he continued, "I profit by my virtue."

That “virtue,” it immediately becomes apparent, consists not of benevolence, but candor about his sharp practices—and a lifetime of insight about what could lead certain customers to his door on this of all days:

"You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed, "when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it."

Markheim, who has little to show for his investments in the stock market, counters that he’s seeking “a Christmas present for a lady” and intimates that “a rich marriage” may depend on the right gift. 

But the state of mind of this unexpected customer is already murky: while he’s brought a dagger with him, it is only after being unsettled by his reflection in a mirror offered by the dealer (a "hand-conscience") that Markheim kills him and begins to look for valuables he can rob from the shop.

Peter Straub, in the Library of America anthology American Fantastic Tales, referred to a dominant theme of the horror genre: “the surrender or collapse of the individual will.” Once Markheim takes the irreversible step of not merely robbing the dealer but murdering him, Stevenson takes the reader on a journey through the “individual will” of this killer that encompasses regret, panic, paranoia, and the workings of the individual conscience.

First, Markheim must come to grips with the material fact of the corpse. At first, what remains of the dealer is a rapid reduction of what the robber-murderer confronted just a few minutes before: “both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing.”

“Sawdust” is an echo of the familiar Biblical warning, “To dust you shall return.” But Markheim’s own actions are involved with this particular state: sawdust is produced by cutting, and cutting the dealer to death has produced Markheim’s current predicament.

But ultimately, the conflict in the story will turn on the question of what a human life consists of. And immediately after Markheim can only acknowledge the crumpled mass before him, far more comes to mind: “And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices.”

Fear of discovery mingles with nostalgia for the season, as he imagines those in nearby homes “sitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger--every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him.”

The physical world outside seems to conspire against the killer, as the tolling of the clock outside leads Markheim to long “to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God.”

The decisive turn in the story comes with a mysterious visitor to the shop. Perception and identity themselves now become fluid:

“The outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God.”

The visitor, who insists that he knows Markheim “to the soul” and offers the kind of wheedling moral reasoning associated with Satan, warns that the dealer’s servant is returning early to the shop and that she, too, must be murdered to assure his escape.

When Markheim flinches from this alternative, the visitor delivers a devastating summary of his moral deterioration:

“For six and thirty years that you have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil? Five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you."

But Markheim will go no further on his path toward evil: “If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down…. I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage."

The visitor’s features change yet again, softening “with a tender triumph”—suggesting that he is not a demon but maybe a guardian angel. With that, Markheim tells the incoming servant to call the police, as he has killed her master.

At the time he wrote this tale, Stevenson was close in age to his protagonist. Though never driven to the moral extremities of his murderer, he must have recalled his own spiritual upbringing with residual regret as he evokes Markheim, on this physically and morally cold day, imagining “the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.”

Stevenson recognizes that evil does not cease to exist, even on one of the holiest days of the year. But neither do the operations of the conscience.

Christmas, as Charles Dickens demonstrates in “A Christmas Carol,” remains a time of year filled with regrets over bad choices and resulting loss and loneliness. “Markheim” operates on the same premise, but shows that some acts are too awful not to leave at least some damage. The best that can be hoped for, then, is a refusal to follow the nihilistic path that beckons.

It is that wintry recognition that has probably limited the number of times that “Markheim” has been dramatized, even though it is as powerfully atmospheric as any Stevenson tale. 

In 1953 Sir Laurence Olivier recorded it for the NBC Radio Anthology Series “Theatre Royal,” and three years later Fred Zinnemann presented it as a half-hour “Screen Director Showcase” 1956 episode starring Ray Milland as Markheim, Rod Steiger as the Visitor, and Jay Novello as the Dealer. (In the UK, it was remade in 1974, with Derek Jacobi as Markheim.)

More unusually, the American composer Carlisle Floyd adapted the story into a one-act opera in 1966. However, while regional opera troupes have occasionally mounted well-received revivals, more high-profile companies have not attempted to do so. They probably understand all too well that this gothic thriller is hardly warm, fuzzy holiday fare for conservative audiences.

Song Lyric of the Day (Dr. Seuss, on That ‘Mean One, Mr. Grinch’)

“You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch
You really are a heel
You're as cuddly as a cactus
You're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch
You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel.”—“You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” lyrics by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, music by Albert Hague, performed by Thurl Ravenscroft, from the animated TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, original air date Dec. 18, 1966
 
For some interesting trivia on this holiday special (so beloved by baby boomers, particularly), see this TV Guide summary on its 50^th anniversary concerning “5 Things You Didn't Know About How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”

Quote of the Day (John Updike, on ‘A Man of No Plausible Address’ at Christmas)

“A man of no plausible address, with no apparent source for his considerable wealth, comes down the chimney after midnight while decent, law-abiding citizens are snug in their beds—is this not, at the least, cause for alarm?”—Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short-story writer John Updike (1932-2009), The Twelve Terrors of Christmas (2006)

The accompanying image, of a man dressed as Santa Claus on his sleigh aboard a holiday train in Chicago, was taken on Nov. 23, 2012.

Quote of the Day (Poet Patrick Kavanagh, With a Memory of an Irish Christmas)

“My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.
 
“Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.
 
“Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.”—Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “A Christmas Childhood,” from Collected Poems (2004)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Mad Men,’ on What a Top Client Can Expect for Christmas)

Roger Sterling [played by John Slattery]: “If Lee Garner Jr. wants three wise men flown in from Jerusalem, he gets it.”—Mad Men, Season 4, Episode 2, “Christmas Comes But Once a Year,” original air date Aug 1, 2010, teleplay by Tracy McMillan, Matthew Weiner, Brett Johnson, and Erin Levy, directed by Michael Uppendahl

Quote of the Day (Thomas Mann, on Christmas Season in 19th Century Germany)

“The great dining-room was closed and mysterious, and there were marzipan and gingerbread to eat — and in the streets, Christmas had already come. Snow fell, the weather was frosty, and on the sharp clear air were borne the notes of the barrel-organ, for the Italians, with their velvet jackets and their black moustaches, had arrived for the Christmas feast. The shop-windows were gay with toys and goodies; the booths for the Christmas fair had been erected in the market-place; and wherever you went you breathed in the fresh, spicy odour of the Christmas trees set out for sale.”—German novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann (1875-1955), Buddenbrooks (1901), translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter (1924

Quote of the Day (Charles Dickens, on ‘The Christmas Spirit’)

“[T]he Christmas spirit… is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance! It is in the last virtues especially, that we are, or should be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions of our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable nothings of the earth!

“Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands! Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.”—English novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870), “What Christmas Is As We Get Older,” in Christmas Stories (1871)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents,’ on Unusual Entertainment at an Office Christmas Party)

Self - Host: [Hitchcock is putting up a display of glasses and bottles of alcohol on an office desk] “Good evening, fellow revellers. Tonight, we are indulging in an old city tradition. It is the event that turned a mild-mannered white-collar worker into a four-armed beast of prey…”

[shows off the display]

Self - Host: “…the office party. However, we had this room designed especially for the party…”

[looks back briefly]

Self - Host: “…by the girls in the office. It has no corners. I am in charge of the entertainment, which all should enjoy. After most of the hors d'oeuvres have been eaten, we're going to throw a company director to the lions. I realize it isn't much, but the lions are a great deal cheaper than the string quartet we had last year. They don't drink as much, either. And now, for the party.” [pours himself a drink]— Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Season 3, Episode 15, “Together,” original air date Jan. 12, 1958, teleplay by Robert C. Dennis, based on the story by Alec Coppel, directed by Robert Altman

Quote of the Day (A.N. Wilson, on How ‘A Christmas Carol’ ‘Invented the Modern Christmas’)

“A Christmas Carol changed not only Dickens's life, but the Western world. It invented the modern Christmas. By February 1844 at least three theatrical productions based on the book were being performed in London alone. In the years that followed, he would publish further Christmas stories, including The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) and The Battle of Life (1846). As far as he was concerned, Christmas had become the busiest time of year and one of the most lucrative—especially after 1853, when he had begun a series of public readings of A Christmas Carol. The Christmas edition of All the Year Round was something he spent six months planning. For it was always the Carol, of all his stories for Christmas, that captured the imagination of readers. Before the Carol was published, Christmas Day was not a public holiday in Britain. By 1846 the newspapers were reporting that ‘Experienced salesmen at Leadenhall-market state that the demand for Christmas geese this year exceeded that of any previous season, and that the establishment of clubs has, within the last few days, brought upwards of 20,000 geese into the market. In some parts of the metropolis, “plum pudding clubs” have been established.’”—English man of letters A.N. Wilson, The Mystery of Charles Dickens (2020)

The image accompanying this post is one of the original 1843 illustrations by the Victorian cartoonist John Leech (1817-1864) in A Christmas Carol—in this case, one of the happier memories of Ebenezer Scrooge’s youth: Mr. Fezziwig’s ball. It comes from this post from The Victorian Web. (Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham.)