BackboneAmerica

Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver
To listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com
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This Sunday is Christmas Day, climax of the season that Charles Dickens called “a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.” I will be with my family that evening, not in the radio studio as on other Sunday nights, and I hope you will be with yours.

But if your activities lend themselves to having the radio on, please join us for a special edition of Backbone Radio with me and my daughter Tina giving a full-length dramatic reading (recorded earlier) of that beloved Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol.”

That’s on 710 KNUS in Denver, or online at 710knus.com, this Sunday the 25th from 5pm to 8pm. And if you haven’t read the Scrooge story yourself this year, I encourage you to look it up right here. You’ll also find some choice quotes from “A Christmas Carol” at the end of this message.

Meanwhile, holidays or no holidays, this mean old world keeps rolling along. Influential voices in America’s political and media elites are practically shouting their denial of the grim lessons of 9/11. Check out the grim analysis by Daniel Pipes, “Back to Sept. 10,” and Cliff May, “You Bet Your Life,” of that irresponsible (and dare we say, disloyal) tantrum from the Left. But on a brighter note, John McIntyre argues it will backlash on the Dems politically. Let’s hope so.

Of course, Christmas has never lacked for high drama. As I said in a column last Sunday, “It all started with a teenager giving birth in a stable, while soldiers searched for her baby to kill him. No, it really started long before that, with a couple in a garden throwing away paradise in one act of disobedience. It all ended, anyway, with three crosses atop a skull-shaped hill on a dark afternoon. But actually it hasn’t ended yet, and won’t end until the world itself does.”

May this unending story, the Christmas story, bring special joy to you and yours on this December 25, and for the ensuing “twelve days” that carry us into the New Year. From all of us at Backbone Radio — John, Matt, Beth, Kathleen, Blayne — have a great one!

Yours for self-government
under the Prince of Peace,
JOHN ANDREWS
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FROM DICKENS’ CHRISTMAS CAROL… opening scene, the words of Scrooge’s nephew Fred… “I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time…

“… the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

“And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it.”
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FROM DICKENS’ CHRISTMAS CAROL… closing scene, after Scrooge finally wishes Bob Cratchit merry Christmas… “Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

“Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset…

“His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him…. and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!
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