Merry Old Christmas Day + Reflections on Modern Christmases

Merry Christmas to any readers who may belong to Orthodox churches whose liturgy follows the Julian calendar!  My friends and I in DC are taking advantage of the occasion by getting to celebrate a little with each other (since we’re all scattered back with our families on the Christmas day that our church follows).

And, in the meantime, I figured I’d post the video from a Christmas radio appearance I did on In the Arena with Monsignor Harrington.  We talked about the parallel, secular celebration of Christmas, the most exciting and/or confusing aspects of the Incarnation, and a little about my own conversion.

The other two guests were Michael De Dora, the Director of the Center for Inquiry’s Office of Public Policy and Jimmy Akin, who writes for the National Catholic Register and Catholic.com.  Michael and I were pretty much in agreement when it comes to the fact that secular Christmas does have a traditional presence in culture at this point and on basic constitutional issues about Christmas displays on government policy, but we ended up debating a little when he talked about one of the great weaknesses of religion being the existence of dogma.