I don’t know about you, but when I think of the Christmas story, I think of, well, the Christmas story. There’s a kind of seamless whole that I have in my head made up of angels and shepherds and Mary and Joseph and the baby in the manger and the stable animals and the star and magi and all the rest. What I don’t think about is how I learned this story; how, that is, it was told to me. Certainly I learned a lot of it from the Bible, hearing the various – and distinct – portions of the story read from Matthew and Luke. But I also learned it from the Christmas carols. And from the manifold crèches in all shapes and sizes that I’ve...

I’ve been thinking a lot of late about the internet. In particular, about time spent on the internet. Maybe it’s all the blogging of late , but I think it’s even more paying attention as my kids (now in 6th and 8th grade) feel more and more pressure to join in the social media world that many of their friends have already and enthusiastically entered. In this regard, two recent pieces have caught my attention. The first is the cover story of this month’s Atlantic which asks the question, “Is Facebook Making us Lonely?” The answer, in case you don’t want to read the whole article, is a qualified yes. Essentially, according to...