by Peter James | Dec 12, 2023 | St. Nicholas
How did we get from St. Nicholas to Santa Claus? It’s a challenge to separate truth from fiction when it comes to ole’ St. Nick. This is what we know with relative certainty. Nicholas (270-343) was a church bishop in Myra (modern Turkey) during a momentous...
by Peter James | Dec 11, 2023 | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day may be one of the most popular, frequently played songs of the Christmas season. While joyful in tone, the song is borne out of deep anguish and pain. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) wrote the poem “Christmas...
by Peter James | Dec 10, 2023 | Elizabeth Rooney
A fifteen-year-old girl wrote in her diary on August 1, 1939, “We picked eight bushels of apples. The men in the quarry blasted out rocks and opened a cave.” Not just any cave. It was an underground cathedral of exquisite mineral formations shaped over...
by Peter James | Dec 9, 2023 | Ida Scudder
She was so well-known that a letter reached her simply addressed to “Dr. Ida, India.” Ida Scudder (1870-1960) was born to American missionary parents in India. Her father was a missionary doctor as was her grandfather, who left a thriving New York medical...
by Peter James | Dec 8, 2023 | John Mason Neale
Sackville College served as a retirement home for poor men in nineteenth century England. The four-hundred-year-old building remains in use today, providing affordable housing to elderly people. The college’s most famous warden (director) was John Mason Neale...
