Merry Christmas, HuffPosters. I hope you are all touched by the grace of this day. We have a special gift for you tucked under our Featured Blog Posts tree: a line-up of holiday-inspired offerings. Remember: every time you click on a post, a blogger gets his wings! Earlier this week, I asked for your suggestions on what gifts we should give to some of our favorite -- and not so favorite -- public figures. You responded with a flying sleigh's worth of great gift ideas. Even Santa's elves couldn't have been more industrious. Now it's time to unwrap the presents. Click here to check out our favorite suggestions for what should be stuffed into the stockings of some of 2008's naughty and nice.
Micro-lending has changed lives. Now a wave of friends and "loose ties" within the social media community are bringing the micro-lending concept and applying it to charitable giving. Call it "Micro-giving."
What this crisis is going to do is bring us into financial alignment. Neighbors are going to meal share and carpool and child care -- less indoor gym workouts and more family outdoor time.
How sober we are today. American Christmases used to be intemperate. Where are the stolen kisses, the bluesy music and the feeling of anything goes (as Cole Porter wrote)?
Christmas celebrates the central premise of the progressive ethical system, "love they neighbor as thyself," and rejects the tribalism and radical individualism that lie at the heart of right wing ideology.
I'd rather hurt my son's feelings about Santa Claus but tell him the truth because I want him to trust me later and tell me when the other kids in school are trying to ply him with crystal meth.
With fewer holiday dollars in their wallets, cash-strapped consumers are resorting to giving such unwanted holiday gifts as shoddy homemade crafts and crumbling baked goods.
This is a Christmas and Hanukah season like no other. Many people have lost money. Millions are out of work, and those who still have jobs fear for their own future. It is a bad time, but also a good time.
It's Christmas Day, and Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace are about to begin their 37th year in the dungeon of Angola Prison. A crucifixion. Where is the public outrage that will resurrect them?
It's easier to find nice apologies and resolution of differences in literature and movies than in life. But blessed are the peacemakers, eh? If only we can figure out how to make peace.
Now that you can give crap to people without actually having to give them anything in reality, here is my virtual gift list for this holiday season.
It's the end of the year, and so I must answer the call for summative listicles of things. So, why not a list of stuff I liked that people in the mass media did this year? Okay!
Every Christmas Americans indulge in their many book, stage, and screen versions of Dickens' Christmas Carol. Then the nation that sighs over the Cratchit family goes back to acting like Ebenezer Scrooge.
My mother knew that her sister Ida would be shocked, more likely horrified by the Christmas tree. It would be another sign of Lilly, "the American one," drifting away from the customs of their forefathers.
Jamie Oliver thinks "fruit is lovely", he uses words like "drizzle" and you sort of feel like he's in the kitchen with you. We're going to try a version of a recipe from his new book at out Christmas dinner as one of the desserts.
God help us to end poverty in our time in all its guises -- inside and out -- physical and spiritual,
so that all our and Your children may live the lives that you intend.
Here's a California Carol from the Courage Campaign in time for the Christmas Arnold wants to give us all.
For Governor Sarah Palin, a DVD of the musical, Annie Get your Gun. Aerial wolf hunting; need I say more?
It's A Wonderful Life has a dark, brooding heart and it openly questions in brutal terms the complaisance of small-town life just after the world's worst-ever conflict, a war that snuffed out tens of millions of people.
