There aren’t any lights on the outside of my house this year. No inflatable reindeer, no twinkling LEDs, and certainly no Clark Griswold moments on a ladder. I’m a child of God not because I’ve decorated a rooftop to prove it, but because a Father saw my empty pockets and invited me into the stable anyway. Grace is a gift that arrived in a feed trough, and I’m just the guy holding the empty wrapping paper. As for Christmas cards, we gave up on the post office when the price

Chocolate-covered cherries have been part of my Christmas for as long as I can remember. My father wasn’t one to throw money around, but every December, there they were—sitting on the kitchen table, a small luxury in a household that counted every penny. In 1966, I could buy a full-size Hershey bar for a nickel, so I can’t imagine a box of those cherries cost more than 29 cents. I doubt my father would have bought them if they had cost more than that. When I was in elementary school,

In 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was sent down to Sarajevo to inspect the troops. Today, we would call that type of visit a photo op. It was purely ceremonial—a way to show the flag and remind the locals exactly who was in charge. To be honest, Ferdinand wasn’t much to look at—just another royal cousin in a continent crawling with them. If the day had gone according to schedule, he would have been a footnote in a dusty history book. But history rarely follows the script. First, a hidden