Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
Travel and Religion
It’s the Christmas season!

It’s the Christmas season!

Last updated on: December 2, 2025 at 12:39 am by Dan Peterson

0 Comments

It’s the Christmas season! 2025-12-02T00:39:47-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Queen’s College, Oxford (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph). It seems that not every consumer of newspapers in England refined his or her powers of critical discernment at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge.

The Daily Mail — a daily British middle-market tabloid — has often been criticized for unreliability, sensationalism, and inaccuracy. In February 2017, the English Wikipedia actually banned its use as a source. Happily, though, The Daily Mail has made a regular hobby of publishing sensationalistic articles about marginal or former Latter-day Saints — just Google “Daily Mail Mormon” to see what I mean — and this one is pretty much par for the course: “The REAL lives of Mormon wives: Why a fundamentalist ‘prophet’ at the head of the world’s biggest polygamous sect is being sued by his ex-wife in a Utah court” The author nods halfheartedly in the direction but, on the whole, makes no really serious effort to distinguish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from polygamist schismatics or, for that matter, from representative examples of Latter-day Saint womanhood such as those featured on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. (He cites the dynamics of what seems to be an unusually terrible family in the Apostolic United Brethren sect, or AUB, as exemplifying “the oppressively patriarchal world of strict Mormonism,” while describing “Mormonism” as “a religion traditionally dismissed as staid, boring and bizarre.” (“More practically, the AUB also differs from other Mormon sects in believing that sexual intercourse can be a source of pleasure, not an act solely designed for purpose of procreation.”) We just can’t win: At one and the same time, we’re staid, prudish, and boring, and yet — being also oppressively patriarchal and bizarre — we’re so irresistibly fascinating that The Daily Mail simply can’t stop publishing lurid articles about us.

Tom Quad, Christ Church, Oxford. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

We’ve entered the month of December, and, with Thanksgiving behind us, I’m now willing to acknowledge that we’re into the Christmas season. (See this notable bit of holiday cheer from Chicago!)

At some point between now and Christmas Day, I hope that you will take the opportunity to watch the eighteen-minute film The Christ Child: A Nativity Story, which I regard as one of the best movies ever made by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It has the characters speaking the real languages of the story. It sets the story properly in a first-century Judaea that actually looks like first-century Judaea. The ambience is, well, humble. The manger is, as it almost certainly was, a stone feeding trough for animals (from the French verb manger [pronounced roughly mahn-zhay], “to eat”) in the style of stony Palestine, rather than a wooden crib in the style of forested Austria or Bavaria or wooded Jacobean England. And the emotional reaction of the principal “Wise Man” to the Christ child — who is of the proper age: no longer an infant but a toddler — never fails to move me.

This is the first of my Christmas-related media recommendations for 2025. It won’t be the last, however, although by far most of them will be concerned with music.

“Thanksgiving at Plymouth,” by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1925)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image

America’s formal Thanksgiving Day holiday is in our rearview mirror and is rapidly receding into the distance, but the holiday season is still with us, and the holidays are a wonderful time altogether for expressing gratitude and giving thanks. So I think it appropriate, even now in December, to share a column that I wrote for Meridian Magazine at Thanksgiving 2021 but didn’t include in my two Thanksgiving-related blog entries here last week, “A Really, Really Long Post For The Eve Of Thanksgiving” and “Four More for Thanksgiving.” It’s entitled “Giving Thanks and Giving Thought.”

The Accra Ghana Temple in December 2006
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

But, alas, it’s time for a look at the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, which preserves a record of the horrors and depredations visited upon the world by ravening theists and the vicious absurdities of theism:

“Church of Jesus Christ donate 6,600 pounds of kimchi to Korean families and welfare centers.” Can you imagine 3.3 tons of kimchi? The mind boggles.
“Generosity Shines During BYU Alumni Service Projects for Away Football Games: The Church, BYU fans and alumni donated thousands of pounds of food, books and other supplies”

And here are some further items from the neighborhood of the Hitchens File:

And this article, I think, is an absolute must-read about the unmixed blessings that come from rejecting religion: “Perspective: Let’s get real about loss of faith: Individuals who have stepped away from faith speak candidly about real life trade-offs, heartaches and ongoing challenges”

Happily, though, in another important article, there seems reason to hope that organized religion is losing its hold on (at least American) humanity and that, therefore, crimes against decency such as those mentioned immediately above may someday be mere dim memories of our barbaric past: “Analysis: Confidence in religion is declining – along with confidence in everything else: A focus on declining confidence in organized religion misses the broader backdrop where institutional confidence is falling virtually everywhere”

And the disappearance of religion may well open the future up for absolutely great things: “As Religion Weakens, Socialism Strengthens” There have, it’s true, been halfhearted attempts at building socialist utopias in the past — in, for instance, Albania, Cambodia, China, Cuba, North Korea, the former Soviet Union, Vietnam, and, in its “National Socialist” variant, in Germany and much of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s — but these have always been marred by glitches and minor mishaps. Surely, it’s time to try again. The State is waiting to be adored again as the source of whatever rights we might claim and whatever good we might desire. What could possibly go wrong?

Travel and Religion

History and Religion

Previous Post

November 30, 2025

A Tribute to a Friend

Next Post

December 2, 2025 Hail, Mary!

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"In a meeting today, I learned another important reason why accurate (or at least as ..."

the PROBLEM

From Serbia’s “White City,” Belgrade

"PL: "Let's hope he doesn't have your address..."I have to frankly confess that a few ..."

DanielPeterson

From Serbia’s “White City,” Belgrade

"Let's hope he doesn't have your address..."

Phil Leaning

From Serbia’s “White City,” Belgrade

"PL: "The layers are peeling back."He appears to be suffering under an odd but powerful ..."

DanielPeterson

From Serbia’s “White City,” Belgrade

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Jezebel" mean in Hebrew?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Daughter of Baal The Lord reigns Unexalted Queen of the people