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Dec. 25, 2024 - Rudy Giuliani
01:00:54
America's Mayor Live (567): Christmas Eve in America—2024
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Good evening.
This is Rudy Giuliani and this is America's Mayor Live.
Tonight we have something very special.
We're going back three years exactly to Christmas Eve 2021 for a podcast I did then called Christ is Christmas.
I believe you'll find it as relevant now as it was then because maybe the most important thing we have to do In this reformation that we're about to undertake, or this restoration we're about to undertake, or reinvention,
or whatever you might call our coming out of maybe the four worst years in American history is to bring God back at the core of our civilization, our culture, and of who we are.
And of course, for those of us who are Christian, that means Jesus.
So that podcast concerns that, in a way predicting what was to happen.
I'll let it speak for itself, but I'll leave you with what a little later tonight, because I'm speaking to you on Christmas Eve, will be read as the gospel For the Christmas Eve mass on every continent on earth and every country on earth.
And it's the second chapter of St. Luke verses 1 through 20. I think when I begin reading it, you will recognize it instantly.
And it came to pass that in those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus That the whole world should be enrolled.
This enrolling was first made by Cyrenius, the governor of Syria, and all went to be enrolled, everyone into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house And family of David to be enrolled with Mary, his espoused wife, who was with child.
And it came to pass that when they were there, her days were accomplished, that she should be delivered.
And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
And they were in the same country shepherds watching and keeping the night watches over their flock.
And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the brightness of God shone round about them, and they feared with great fear.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not, because I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be for all the people.
For this day, It's born to you a savior who is Christ the Lord in the city of David.
And this shall be a sign unto you.
You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of goodwill.
And it came to pass, after the angels departed from them into heaven, the shepherd said one to the other, Let us go over to Bethlehem, and let us see this word that has come to pass And
the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God.
For all the things they had heard as it was told unto them.
And that's the end of the Christmas Eve Gospel and the beginning of the story of the life of Jesus Christ, which ends with his sacrifice, his conquering sin, and his resurrection from the dead.
So let's go now to the podcast of three years ago, and I hope you find it as meaningful today as I did then.
The episode today, as it should be, which I am doing on Christmas Eve, is about Christmas and about what it is, what it should be, and to some extent what it's become and how we can bring it back.
Christmas Day is almost upon us, and for any of us who were brought up in the Russian tradition, I'd say, and fortunate enough to have parents, whether poor or middle class or whatever, who were able to provide a Christmas, no matter how small or large.
It was, for the children, enormously exciting.
It was the most exciting day and the most exciting night, Christmas Eve, of the year.
And, of course, you know, the reason for it, the reason it exists is the celebration, the remembrance, Of the birth of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and as God become man to save us from our sins and show us a way to salvation.
The most important thing that ever happened in the history of the world.
That's of course to those of us who believe.
But that regardless of whether you believe or not, that's the genesis of it.
So when all these people are running around and celebrating and Singing carols and having parties and getting drunk and office parties and who knows what else they're doing.
There's only one reason it's happening.
It's like Tiny Tim says in A Christmas Carol about Ebeneezza Scrooge when everybody is making comments about him, you know, nasty comments about him.
Tiny Tim says, well, he's the founder of The Feast.
Well, the founder of this feast is the infant baby who was born in Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago.
Not necessarily on December 25th.
We'll talk about that.
But he was born in meager, lowly circumstances, but adored by the shepherds and magi.
Lived a short life.
And I don't think anyone would dispute with you it was the most significant life ever lived in the history of the world.
I don't know if I have to prove that.
I mean, the religion that is the most universal, covers every continent, is the Christian religion, the religion of Jesus Christ.
It's affected our civilization, Western civilization, profoundly.
It's affected others very significantly.
And there's no other one single human being that has had as much impact on world history.
Tonight, this is Christmas Eve, as I said, when Hundreds of millions of Christians celebrate Christmas Eve.
They'll read the same gospel on every single continent in every language imaginable.
They'll read about Mary and Joseph having to go to Joseph's town to register for the first census and having to leave What you would call now mid-north, north of Israel to the south of Israel.
Bethlehem, which is now in the Palestinian Authority.
A short trip by car now, a long trip by donkey there.
They'll all read the same thing.
And it's from that, it's from the emanation of that, that all of this has come about and this magic night that takes place.
Now the magic night takes place because of things you might regard as somewhat frivolous.
You know, I look back when I was 10 and 12 and 8 and 14 and to not being able to sleep the night before and wondering what was under the tree.
And when I believed in Santa Claus, was I a good boy or not?
And like the young man in The Christmas Story, which is why it's so popular, was I going to get the Red Ryder BB gun?
No, I was in Brooklyn and then in Long Island and BB guns weren't too popular there.
Having watched that movie now, I wish I had gotten it.
But whether the child is wishing for the toy rifle or a bicycle or a basketball or a football or a basketball court or a beautiful new coat, lovely doll, it's special.
And it stays with you.
And when you start to forget it, it comes back if you are fortunate enough to be a parent, doesn't it?
Then you relive your childhood through creating that same wonder for them.
I remember my children both before and after I was mayor because a good many of my Christmas Eve's in the early growth of my children was spent.
I remember their excitement and the time they believed in Santa Claus and And one particular situation comes back, which I am going to mention.
It's not a happy memory, but Christmas is not all happy memories.
The happy memories are magnified at Christmas time, and the sad ones are too.
The people we lose, the tragedies that occur.
I remember a few days before Christmas, My uncle, who at that time was thrown off the truck and broke his back and questioned whether he'd walk again, whether he'd live.
Eventually he went back and he became a captain of the fire department with a 27-year career.
It was a very, very dark, very somber Christmas.
Then I remember my first year as mayor.
Obviously, I can tell you the date, December 24, 1994. I went to Midnight Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral with my wife, Donna.
And I do believe we brought Andrew.
He was right on the cusp of the age at which you would bring him.
And we left Caroline with my mom.
And was the family that used to come to a Christmas Eve gathering that I would have when I was the mayor.
And some would come to St. Patrick's and some would stay at the house.
And the Mass was over.
It was beautiful.
And the Cardinal had a small gathering afterwards.
And we stayed very shortly, short time because of Andrew, that he blessed Andrew.
It was always a religious experience to be with John O'Connor.
And for me, a very, very uplifting one.
I came home and I had to put together two toys.
I remember one was a dollhouse and the other was something for Andrew.
And I had a dollhouse together, which is kind of strange because I never had a dollhouse.
Whatever I put together for Andrew, I did have.
And I kept my suit on.
I never bothered to change because you know how you get about those things.
And then you put one A into B and B into C and C into D and D into F and G and all of a sudden it falls apart.
And you put it together and it falls apart.
And now you're thinking, my God, you're making noise and wake up the kid who's going to bore the whole Santa thing.
And he was at the age where, you know, He's beginning to look at me funny when he did the Santa Claus thing.
Caroline was in it for all it's worth.
And all of a sudden, I got a call from downstairs where the police station was, the police guard station.
And they said, Mr. Mayor, a police officer that was shot in Manhattan.
They're rushing him to NYU Hospital.
And we know you want to be notified of these things right away.
I said, well, should I? Let's get started.
I said, well, we haven't heard from the police commissioner.
It was Bill Bratton at the time.
We haven't heard from the police commissioner.
And we always have this protocol that he's going to go over with you first so you're not surprised and so we don't walk into a difficult situation.
And I had to know him to show up in difficult situations.
So I said, okay.
I went back to putting, but I was so disturbed.
I really was.
We had had firefighters right before that.
Christmas time always seemed to be a time when we had serious injuries to our firefighters, very often had deaths to our firefighters.
It was largely because of the Christmas trees, but just for a whole host of reasons.
But police officers, not as much.
And I was working, but I couldn't pay attention, and I was getting worse and worse at putting the thing together.
And I was all dressed, and once I finished this, I was, of course, going to get undressed and go to bed and get ready to get up real early because as soon as the sun came out, Caroline would shoot to the Christmas tree.
She wanted to be there to see it, take pictures of it.
So I decided I would not get undressed and I would go downstairs and I'd go put myself near NYU Hospital so that I could go in.
I did.
Police officers were there 24 hours a day.
We got in the car.
I never used the sirens in and around Gracie Mansion unless it was a really, really important, significant emergency because I had a fundraiser once when I was running for mayor because the people who lived there were offended that David Dinkins used to do that.
And they raised money to make me mayor and promised that I'd only use it if I had to.
Things like that stayed with me.
So I didn't need this.
I didn't need it because I wasn't sure if I should be there or not.
But, you know, we moved out pretty fast and there was nobody on the road and the whole whole The whole distance is about three miles.
We were there, and we were two blocks away, and Bill called me and said, Mayor, I don't think you should show up for this one.
I said, why, Bill?
He said, well, we're not sure yet, but I think it was a suicide.
This young man was very, very depressed.
His girlfriend left him.
He's been calling her all day, and they've been having a fight all day, and he's been going in and out of Smith's Bar, even though he shouldn't while he was on duty, right near 40 seconds to do it.
Gone now.
And apparently he got very, very drunk and got off duty and walked over to Smith's Bar, went into the back where he had been drinking all day, and all of a sudden they hear a shot and looks like he blew the brakes.
Whoa!
I said, Bill, I think I should.
He said, but you don't want to get through.
I said, but let me come in back.
So I did.
I came to the back door.
I spent time with him.
Some of his family showed up and tried to do the best that I could to talk to people about the complexity of life and the fact that his life was an important life because who knows how many people he saved.
Whatever happened, happened to the complexity of the human mind and God will fix it.
I don't remember really exactly what I said, and I went back to Gracie, a different person.
You go in two seconds from the most beautiful things in life.
The birth of the baby Jesus, which we celebrated at, having communion.
You have wonderful children.
You know you're going to make them happy.
Always feeling guilty.
He didn't spend enough time with him as a mayor.
Now, devoting the night to putting together their toys.
Incompetent though I was.
And then all of a sudden, the worst part of human life comes up.
Something very hard for many of us to understand.
The young man takes his life.
He said, I wish I had a chance to talk to him.
I wish I had a chance to tell him.
There'll be many, many more girls.
My friend, you're 26 years old.
Gee, if I could just have that opportunity.
Did that with two people.
Talked them down.
Often it's just getting perspective.
But that's Christmas and it stays in your mind unlike anything else.
And I want to re-emphasize the fact that there's a reason for that.
And the reason for that is not because of the It's not because of the gifts or the Christmas trees or the wonderful parties or the beautiful movies and shows and great music or the general spirit of love and caring.
Oh, no, no, no.
It's here because there are More people that believe in this particular religion than any other religion in the history of the world.
And what they believe is that on that day, God intervened in the world, made his son part of his triune Personality.
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The Jewish people.
My goodness, the human beings are so important that God talks to them.
God communicates with Moses and the prophets and even seems to have some arguments with them.
It's not arguments, discussions, differences.
Forgive them at times when they are disloyal.
And then, the ultimate.
Man is made in the image of God.
I think I remember in my catechism, man is made in the image and likeness of God.
That makes man, woman, humanity very important.
It makes human life sacred.
Of course, it's underlined in that thou shalt not kill and commandments that God gives directly You couldn't make that point stronger than by God becoming man.
That's the core of it.
You're celebrating like this and because more people believe that than believe any other religion.
Now, you may not believe it, but if none of them did and he never lived or nobody paid attention to him, you wouldn't be celebrating.
That's the point.
So I noticed an article in the New Epoch Times about that great, great piece, A Christmas Carol.
And it talks about the significance of the Christmas Carol and why it may be significant today.
But there's a quote in it I'd like you to think about because it may help us figure out what we have to do.
It's written by Sean Fitzpatrick.
And the name of it is Do You Know A Christmas Carol?
And it goes on to describe the bigger philosophy or the bigger reason and the things that Christmas Carol accomplished in reviving Christmas along with Along with Washington Irving in America and Clement Moore, which was the night before Christmas, this part of the 19th century, Christmas became much more prominent.
But he writes, does Fitzpatrick, about then.
Christmas is a lost and long forgotten mystery in need of a great awakening.
Which is the thundering and laughing message of Charles Dickens' Carol.
I would say we could apply this today, that Christmas is a lost and long forgotten mystery in need of a great awakening.
Isn't that what you do?
Shouldn't we awaken it?
Shouldn't we awaken Christmas?
Shouldn't we?
The Reformation.
And even if not everyone is going to believe, because that's never going to be the case, let's make sure we put Jesus in the middle of the Christmas story, because he is the Christmas story.
And let's make certain that we all remind ourselves of that, first of all, as believers, And that we remind others who are partaking of the collateral effects of that.
Why?
All who participate should know why this day and season is so exceptional.
You know, the biblical basis for Jesus's birthday being Christmas has been put in doubt.
Because, and this comes largely from the Puritans who vanned Christmas for a period of time in England and in the United States because they said it had no biblical basis.
Well, they're being very short-sighted.
And I think somehow, if you excuse me with an aside, I think there's a bit of prejudice involved in that because of the name that he had acquired, Christmas.
Focus on what Christmas means.
It means Christmas mass.
So that word wasn't applied and focusing on the holiday of Christmas didn't happen originally.
When the early Christians began practicing their new religion, which many of them saw as just another version of Judaism, they did a Last Supper again, a reenactment of the Last Supper, which turned into the sacrificial part of the Mass.
They sat down at the table and they broke bread and they consecrated the bread and did as Jesus told them to do this in memory of me.
And that clearly is laid out in the Bible and particularly in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles.
But there's no reference to celebrating the baby Jesus' birthday.
It probably didn't come about until somewhere in the second century.
And it was originally, the earliest they can get back to is about 200 AD. They picked January 6th as the date.
And then in the mid-4th century, I believe it was Pope Julius I, moved it to December 25th.
And he moved it to December 25th.
And so this is another reason why Christmas is put in doubt by the Puritans.
But he moved it to December 25th because it coincided with some great pagan festivals that Romans participated in and that many of the Christians and Jews participated in because they participated in the Fun part of it, the way non-believers in Jesus participate in the fun parts of Christmas.
And the two, if I recall correctly, there were two of them.
I'll show you how they're spelled because they're Latin words.
One was Saturnalia and the other was Juvenalia.
So one was for the god of agriculture and the other was for the god of light.
Actually, a Hindu god, but the Romans celebrated this, and they celebrated these around the time of the winter solstice.
It's the shortest day of the year, I should say, and it's beginning from that day on.
Every day will be longer.
The sun will be out longer.
So among other things, both Even the one god of agriculture, the god of light, they celebrate light.
And they celebrate the fact that things are going to be more beautiful and more open.
And this is a period of time, particularly the Saturnalia feast, where poor people The working people are elevated to status in which the richer people, the more significant people, serve them and help them and bring them gifts.
I'm guessing now that it's probably a sort of thank you for the harvest, you know, a way of thanking the people who made it possible.
So then Julius, thinking like a Like a good executive said, I'm going to be nice and comfortable for my Roman converts.
If I placed a great feast right there, we can have our feast and they can have their feast.
And who knows, maybe many of them will come over and boy, did it work.
He made December 25th the date.
He took January 6th and made it the date of the Epiphany.
Which was the arrival of the three kings to celebrate Jesus.
The official Christmas, really, where you can be sure of it, because the second century part is somewhat foggy.
It's the third century, Julius I, who Who describes December 25th as the Nativity, and then the other becomes the Epiphany or the presentation of the Magi to Jesus.
So that sets the beginning, right?
And how How does this all become, how does it all become what it became?
I mean, let's answer a few of the obvious, more interesting questions, like Santa Claus.
Who is Santa Claus?
The best we can tell, Santa Claus is a saint who lived on a Greek island, a bishop, who lived on a Greek island, who came from a very wealthy family, but because he was a Christian, He was persecuted.
He was tortured, actually.
His name was Nicholas of Barry.
Saint Nicholas of Barry.
And Saint Nicholas of Barry would give gifts to children.
And he would appear and help them in extraordinarily difficult situations.
One who was deformed, he helped it cure.
Several daughters who were in a family that didn't have any money and weren't able to get married, he secretly provided dowries for them.
Many acts, all directed toward children.
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And for a limited time, your order Well, we've been talking about a great subject, Santa Claus.
And this will kind of give you an example of how this extremely serious religious story, religious act or set of facts become secularized, first in a rather beautiful way and then sometimes in a very demeaning way.
But so St. Nicholas.
St. Nicholas, as best we can tell, as I said, was a fourth century bishop of then the Latin church, the Roman church.
There were two parts to it then, but together, Western and Eastern.
Large distinction being that the Western said Mass in Latin.
And the mass was said in Greek, and the patriarch was the leader of it.
There were many patriarchs, and it was unclear as to whether they accepted the pope as the leader.
Some did, some didn't, and eventually that became the reason for the decision between them, although they remained together for 1,000 or 1,100 years with slightly different practices.
But they both accepted the 25th as the Day of Christmas, with the exception of the Armenian Church, which uses the Epiphany as the Day of Christmas.
So St. Nicholas was born in Asia Minor.
He was tortured for his faith by the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
And he was released and saved by Constantine the Great, who is, of course, And really, eventually made it the religion of the empire.
So Saint Nicholas and Barry is the gentleman who appeared to a terrified boy who was kidnapped and enslaved.
He comforted the boy and brought him back to his mother, who had been without her child for over a year, when children got lost playing.
And in one case, they were beaten very badly By a butcher, Nicholas prayed to God and brought him back to the mother.
And of course, the story about the daughters and the dowry, which is kind of a really interesting one.
But Nicholas was so good to children that This painting was done by Mattia Precci.
It's called The Glory of Saint Nicholas of Barry.
It was done in 1653. Don't know how well you can see it, but you can try to find it in art books.
You can see the great saints.
And the great saint here is being given gifts.
The young people, the young people are Are giving him gifts.
And it almost seems like he's offering those gifts up to God, or he's acknowledging to God, God, you're the reason that I was able to do this.
You see the children and their faces, they're quite expressive and looks like they're very grateful.
And he has his arms up almost as if, I don't deserve this.
This is you, not me.
Well, I show you that.
I could show you so many others, right?
Fra Angelico and his unbelievably beautiful paintings of the Virgin and the Child.
He spent all his life doing that.
He painted it thousands and thousands and thousands of times just to get it right.
So much of the art That makes up the art of Western civilization is religious.
In fact, for a while it was only religious, and so also the music.
Music developed from the chant, became eventually the Gregorian chant, and then composers, German, Italian, We began doing pieces with instruments, and not just voices, although at first that was frowned on.
Then we get all of the great religious music.
That becomes the basis for opera and symphony eventually.
The one that I recommend, because what I am going to recommend to everyone, is reading the story.
To your family every Christmas.
We're just going to read in whatever order you want.
Matthew 1, 18 to 25. That's not that long.
Luke 1, 26 to 38. And then we do the epiphany.
Second book of Luke 1 to 21. And I think, first of all, that sets aside all of the claims that it's not appropriate to celebrate because there was no celebration laid out in the Bible.
The Bible suddenly lays out all the reasons why it is quite, quite appropriate to have a celebration.
A substitute for reading it would be to listen to Or go to a performance of was the libretto, Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which was originally composed by Bach for the 12 Days of Christmas in the Lutheran Churches for their Vespa service.
uh in the late afternoon and uh it has six parts and it relates to you know christmas the second day the third day um the epiphany but it pretty and it borrows from the gospels of of mark and matthew so you're reading reading the story you're getting also some of the greatest music ever composed by any human being the great Johann
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Christmas and the celebration of Christmas has had enormous challenges over the almost, you know, 2000 years.
First, it wasn't recognized that it had to be The Christmas tree, which comes from many of the traditions of bringing trees into the house at the wintertime to celebrate nature,
just to create beauty, and the Santa Claus that we talked about, the giving of gifts that comes out of many different backgrounds, Roman, Northern European, Asian,
Christmas went through a period of time when it was religiously doubted during the break between, not so much the Reformation, it was after the Reformation, the break within even the Protestant churches.
It was the Puritans' real revolt against the Church of England, which was In their view, much too close to the theology and practice of the Papist Church, the Roman Catholic Church.
So it's had an up and down experience.
And Christians have been the subject of persecution many, many times over the centuries.
Not focused on the way some other groups focus on it.
And this is not to take away from those other groups.
All of that persecution is equally sinful to God and equally horrible to human beings.
But because of Christianity's great success, because it's become the religion most practiced in the world, it almost maybe makes Christians feel Uncomfortable, complaining.
And also their love makes them somewhat even more sympathetic to others who are being persecuted because others are being persecuted.
But at different times, Christians, certainly during the Roman era, certainly during the rise of The Muslim invasions of Europe and songs like Silent Night, for example, were composed during this period.
It's composed in Germany by a composer named Franz Gruber, to him by a priest who had written them Who had written them, and he didn't have anyone that he thought could really do justice to it.
The priest's name was Joseph Moore, and he was an Austrian priest.
And he was walking through the snow-covered forest, I guess, of Austria, and he was just struck by the beauty of it, and he wrote down the words For Silent Night, he wrote down Steelenacht.
In German, it's Steelenacht, Hillenacht.
And then he was not a lyricist, so he went to his friend, Franz Gruber, who was a schoolteacher, and he was the church's choir master, kind of a poor man's Johann Sebastian Bach.
And together, They did Silent Night and they performed it.
They performed it that Christmas at midnight mass.
There is a movie that I saw, I cannot find it, with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., in which during the development of it, the organ in the poor church goes out, so they don't have an organ, and they have to accompany it originally with a guitar.
And of course, it was German.
And it was brought to America by the German immigrants who came to America, translated into English.
And of course, the story that just brings you to tears is when they took the interruption during the First World War, where the English and French troops were in one area.
And the in their trenches and the Germans were across them in their area.
And it was Christmas Eve night and they weren't fighting and both could hear that they were singing the same song.
The English could hear the German words, you know, steal and knock.
And the Germans could hear a silent night, holy night.
Are we where we were when The author in Epoch Times said that the Christmas, the message of it had been completely lost and overcome.
I'm afraid we have.
I don't mean all of us, but I mean as a society.
Here's a poll, which I think it tells you what you know.
In 2019, more than nine in ten Americans polled by Gallup said they celebrate Christmas.
Well, that's good.
But just 35% said they saw the holiday as strongly religious.
That's very, very sad.
Because even if it isn't strongly religious for you, you're denying history if you don't recognize it as being a celebration that exists only because of religion.
It wouldn't be here.
And you deny one of the reasons that people have faith because it can do things like that.
It can elevate.
It can elevate to the point that something becomes universal.
You say it might be the strength of the idea.
The religious person says it's the hand of God.
So how How do we get there?
Let's come to some conclusions here.
Christmas needs to be revived.
Whether we are believers, strong, moderate, or non-believers, for the education of our young people, they must know the derivation of Christmas.
It is a lie to make it appear as if this is not derived from a tremendous religious tradition and from something that many, many people, hundreds of millions, billions of people have believed is religious and still do.
You don't have to believe it, but you can't deny the history of it.
That's what communists want you to do.
They want nothing more than to wipe out the derivation of Christmas, my goodness.
It would prevent communism if you kept to that derivation.
So first, let me urge you, if you do know the story and you've broken away from it and the faith is no longer there, let me just give you a little Let's go back to
Immanuel Kant and Kierkegaard.
They're great philosophers, right?
Kierkegaard is the founder of existential philosophy.
I mean, you wouldn't think he would spend so much time on religion, but he did.
And very simply, they came up with the following theory.
Faith, belief in God, belief that God is the creator of the universe and that there is more to this universe, meaning life after death, than we understand or realize It cannot be proven by logic, reason, science, facts, arguments, tremendous egotism, that you know everything.
There's one thing that's absolutely true, and it was Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.
The beginning of intelligence, reason, and philosophy is the acknowledgement that you don't know everything.
And you never will.
Because there's a body of knowledge beyond you.
Now, what is that body of knowledge?
I can't prove to you that it's God and faith But you can take a leap.
Think of it this way.
Two mountains.
It's a big chasm between the two mountains.
Here are all the things that get you right up to defending belief in God.
There's no one that creates a bridge.
You just got to jump.
Thank you.
And once you do, you'll see the certainty that you have.
I don't know if I explained that well enough or not, but believe me, Kent and Kirk of God, although I know when you hear the word philosophy, it sounds very imposing, explain it very, very beautifully and very easily.
So one way we can reestablish Christmas is we can get more people back To the actual belief in the story.
So let's make that a big part of our New Year's resolution.
And in fact, as part of our Christmas celebration every year, let's remind ourselves of it.
The way the Jewish people remind themselves during the Passover.
Never forget.
Maybe we have to develop a new tradition.
Here's the new tradition.
The new tradition is, for those of you who believe, I want you to go to church.
There's nothing that surpasses going to church and listening to the beautiful midnight mass gospel.
But whether you go to church or you don't, I want you to establish a new ceremony, tradition in your family.
I want you to read.
The Christmas story.
Sometime on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day when the family gathers, either your small nuclear family or your large extended family, I want you to go take out Oh, it's easy.
It's easy.
It's very short.
Very, very short.
And if you have a couple of people who like to perform, you know, every family has people who like to perform, they would love to read this stuff.
I mean, they would love to read it.
And it depends on how much you want to read.
I don't know that you need all the genealogies.
I'm not even sure how accurate they are.
Right?
But I would certainly begin, certainly begin with Luke.
And Because I think one of the most powerful stories in the Bible is the annunciation.
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.
And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great, And they shall be called the Son of the Highest.
And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of the Father David.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.
Therefore also that holy thing, which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God.
The Son of God
And who can say if your love grows as your heart shows on earth.
only time We are the hell, we are the hell Who can
say why your heart cries when your love lies only in time?
And who can say why your heart cries when your love lies only in time?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's our purpose to bring to bear the principle of common sense and rational discussion to the issues of our day.
America was created at a time of great turmoil, tremendous disagreements, anger, hatred.
There was a book written in 1776 that guided much of the discipline of thinking That brought to us the discovery of our freedoms, of our God-given freedoms.
It was Thomas Paine's Common Sense, written in 1776, one of the first American bestsellers, in which Thomas Paine explained by rational principles the reason why these small colonies felt the necessity to separate From the Kingdom of Great Britain and the King of England.
He explained their inherent desire for liberty, for freedom, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the ability to select the people who govern them.
And he explained it in ways that were understandable to all the people, not just the elite.
Because the desire for freedom is universal.
The desire for freedom adheres in the human mind and it is part of the human soul.
This is exactly the time we should consult our history.
Look at what we've done in the past and see if we can't use it to help us now.
We understand that our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world.
The greatest democracy, the freest country, a country that has taken more people out of poverty than any country ever.
All of us are so fortunate to be Americans.
But a great deal of the reason for America's constant ability to self-improve is because we're able to reason, we're able to talk, we're able to analyze.
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