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 [...]

It was the week before Christmas, and the First Reader Class, in a lower East Side school, had, almost to a man, decided on the gifts to be lavished on “Teacher.” She was quite unprepared for any such observance on the part of her small adherents, for her first study of the roll book had [...]

“When my father had finished speaking, we all bowed low again before the young child; and the mother lifted him in her arms and placed his cheek against her own, smiling graciously on us, but uttering no word. And we came forth from the stable and stood again beneath the stars in the courtyard of [...]

“So the sheep were quietly gathered into the fold at the tower, and we hastened to Bethlehem. Never shall I forget that journey by night. We spake not many words, as we traveled swiftly the twenty furlongs; talk seemed altogether tame; but now and then my father broke forth in a song, and the others [...]