Welcome, October

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 “The skies they were ashen and sober;        The leaves they were crispéd and sere—        The leaves they were withering and sere;  It was night in the lonesome October        Of my most immemorial year;  It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,        In the misty mid region of Weir—  It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,        In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.” (First stanza of “Ulalume” by Edgar Allen Poe)

Christmas mood

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Sherwood Wirt of Decision magazine (he went to be with the Lord in November 2008), once wrote of the mood of the day when Christ was born:

"The people of that time where being heavily taxed, and faced every prospect of a sharp increase to cover expanding military expenses. The threat of world domination by a cruel, ungodly, power-intoxicated band of men was ever just belowe the threshold of consciousness. Moral deterioration had corrupted the upper levels of society and was moving rapidly into the broad base of the populace. Intense nationalistic feeling was clashing openly with new and sinister forms of imperialism. Conformity was the spirit of the age.

Government handouts were being used with increasing lavishness to keep the population from rising up and throwing out the leaders. Interest rates were spiraling upward in the midst of an inflated economy.

External religious observances were considered a political asset, and abnormal emphasis was being placed upon sports and athletic competition. Racial tensions were at the breaking point.

In such a time, and amid such a people, a child was born to a migrant couple who had just signed up for a fresh round of taxation, and who were soon to become political exiles. And the child who was orn was called, among other things, Immanuel, God with us."

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