It's C-day minus 6. Are the decorations up? Presents bought and wrapped? Meals planned? Cookies baked? Sugar-high children restrained?
In all the rush, has Christ gone missing again?
You might want to make a pot of spicy tea, settle down in an overstuffed chair, and read a fairy tale.
That approach would make sense to Tony Woodlief, a management consultant and writer who, in his wonderful op-ed piece in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (thanks, Molly, for the tip), pits Chesterton, Lewis, MacDonald, Rowling, and St. Paul against "puritans and atheists" who prefer their truth straight up.
There's "a seeming paradox in St. Paul's letter to Roman Christians," Woodlief writes:
"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. . . ." How does one see "invisible attributes"? Only people raised on fairy tales can make sense of that. It belongs in a terrain where magic glasses can illumine what was heretofore hidden, where rabbit holes open into wonderlands. No wonder some atheists like Mr. Dawkins want to kill Harry Potter.Many years ago my daughter Heidi was walking home from school when she overheard this earnest exchange between two first-graders walking a few paces behind her:
First Child: Did you know that there are people who don't believe in God?That child would be in her thirties now. I hope she still believes in magic.
Second Child: That's nothing. I know people who don't believe in Santa Claus!