If this is the last week your children are in school — you have all of my sympathy, support, and a bag of cookies (very big bag of cookies!). I think this is the hardest week of the year, at least for me. I feel like we have to army crawl with one arm over the finish line on Friday.
This year, I started backwards clicking on my Family Search profile. To my surprise I found that we have several lines of French and Italian ancestors. One of these ancestors was Queen Beatrice of Provence — one of the four sister queens of Medieval Europe. I recommend reading the story of these four sisters, it’s very interesting. Europe as we know it today did not always exist. In the Middle Ages, country and regional boundaries were very different. The area of Southern France, known as modern day Provence was not part of France. France was the area around Paris. In Provence they spoke Occitan which is a romance language, that sounds sort of French, but not all the way. This area had more in common with Italy than Paris. We assign these carols to the French and Italians, but their origins are not necessarily the France and Italy that we know today. Still they are so beautiful and celebrate our Savior Jesus Christ. Continue reading
Luke 2: 7, “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” We know Christ was born into humble circumstances. 
If you get emails from the Church, you’ve probably seen this already. If not here is a 
As I’ve been writing about Christmas music the last couple of weeks, I have tried to focus on sacred music. After all it is Christmas .. you know Christ’s Mass. It’s a religious holiday. I’ve been scratching my head as I’ve read more than a few news stories about towns, schools, and shopping malls banning things like nativity displays, public readings of the Christmas story from the Bible, and even candy canes. The excuse usually has to do with something along the lines of, “We’re promoting inclusivity…” bla, bla, bla. Ok, but it’s a Christian religious holiday — it’s ok to include Christ and Christians in there somewhere. The Nativity story is part of the holiday, as is reading the Bible, singing the songs and so forth. The sad thing is these attempts to be “inclusive” end up being “exclusive” to the people whose holiday it is in the first place … Christians, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. You know Christ’s Mass…. anyway, I’ll get off my soap box now. I feel much better.