Nativity

Forget your Christmas cards and little crèche the cutesy donkey, sheep and shepherd boys. Put away the twinkle lights and all that trash; the candy, carols, cards and tacky toys. For there in your safe familiar manger lies something that should shock and terrify— a mewling, interstellar stranger, an undercover agent—infant spy. He promises to turn every table and become an unrelenting master. making the satisfied world unstable and lashing the complacent with disaster. Here shivers something unpredictable— divine but defined, swaddled yet wild. Here is something tender and terrible— a feisty girl and her dangerous child.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. A graduate of Oxford University, he is the Pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church, in Greenville, SC, and author of twenty books, including Immortal Combat, The Romance of Religion, The Quest for the Creed, and Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men. He contributes to many magazines, papers, and journals, including National Catholic Register, Catholic Digest, and The Stream. His latest book, Beheading Hydra- A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age, is published by Sophia Institute Press. Visit his blog, listen to his podcasts, join his online courses, browse his books, and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com.