A picture could never do justice to downtown Raton at Christmastime. Traveling north on Main, one is treated to the twinkling glow of multi-colored Christmas lights lining the street and adorning the well-kept storefronts, all nestled under the imposing, snowcovered mountains and mesas that separate New Mexico from Colorado. At this late hour on Christmas [...]

On Christmas Eve, the parish priest of the little village of St. Martin, in the French Pyrenees, was getting ready to celebrate Mass when he began to smell a delicious perfume. It was winter, the flowers had disappeared a long time ago – and yet there was this pleasant smell as if springtime had appeared [...]

On Christmas Eve, the king invited the prime minister to join him for their usual walk together. He enjoyed seeing the decorations in the streets, but since he didn’t want his subjects to spend too much money on these just to please him, the two men always disguised themselves as traders from some far distant [...]

In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone.
The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the [...]

“Do you really expect me to go to Bethlehem?” Joseph banged down his chisel on the scarred bench.
Ephraim, his cousin, had just entered the low workshop. “You don’t have a choice, Joseph. If you don’t go the Romans will confiscate your house and your precious tools. Just try to carve a yoke with your fingernails.”
“What [...]

Lets think back over two thousand years, to imagine what the Inn may have been like.
It was probably the Innkeepers own home. He may have had a couple of extra rooms, to rent out to travelers. This would have given him some extra money. I wonder if there were even beds. Probably just mats on [...]

In the early 1930s, Margaret Kisilevich and her sister Nellie gave a  Christmas gift to their neighbors, the Kozicki family, which was remembered by them all their lives and which has become an inspiration to
their families.
Home to Margaret back then was Two Hills, Alberta, Canada—a farming community populated largely by Ukrainian and Polish immigrants who [...]

And while Hyacinthe worked, he told,;of sunshine and dust, of the shadow of vine-leaves on the flat white walls of a house; of rosy doves on the roof; of the flowers that come out in the spring, anemones crimson and blue, and white cyclamen in the shadow of the rocks; of the olive, the myrtle, [...]

“The master will beat me,” thought Hyacinthe, and he trembled a little, for Pierre’s beatings were cruel. “But if I hurry, I shall spoil the wood, and it is too beautiful to be spoiled.”
But he trembled again when Pierre came into the workshop, and he stood up and touched his cap.
“Is the cabinet finished, imbecile?” [...]

The good curé of Terminaison says that this tale of Hyacinthe’s is all a dream. But then Madame points triumphantly to the little cabinet of sandalwood in the corner of her room. It had stood there for many years now, and the dust has gathered in the fine lines of the little birds’ feathers, and [...]