Walter Russell Mead, a Providence contributing editor, is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College, and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. His next book, The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People will be published by Knopf in 2018.
Walter’s “Yuletide Blog” has been a Christmas tradition for many of his readers since he first published it over at The American Interest’s “Via Meadia” blog for the 2009-2010 Christmastide. This wonderful, if sometimes laid-aside, season in the Christian calendar runs from Christmas eve to epiphany (January 6th). Walter’s “Twelvetide” reflections have shepherded many into remembering not just the history but the meaning of Christmas and the yuletide season.
Providence is thrilled to become the new home for Walter’s Yule Blog. It is appropriate that we become so. As Walter writes, “Christianity is the living force behind American liberal ideology as well as American conservativism.” Providence understands that as we let go of the meaning of Christmas, we deracinate ourselves from our collective memory of Christendom, and thereby such virtues as “humility, forbearance, honesty, and tolerance begin to fade from our common life.” The loss of such Christian memory bodes ill for our republic, and what bodes ill for our republic bodes ill for the wide world.
May these yuletide reflections be a rock against such forgetfulness and a goad to the quickening of faith, hope, and love—both at home and far abroad. Merry Christmas!
The slaughter of the innocents reminds us that God paid an obscene price for His determination to people the world with real people and autonomous moral actors rather than sock puppets. That is what we really celebrate at Christmas.
Walter Russell MeadDecember 28, 2017
The Christian idea of the Virgin Birth is making at least two fundamentally crucial claims. One of them is about Jesus.
Walter Russell MeadDecember 27, 2017
Both Matthew and Luke think it’s extremely important that Jesus was a Jew and that the story of Jesus is part of the story of God’s encounter with the Jewish people.
Walter Russell MeadDecember 26, 2017
Providence is thrilled to become the new home of Walter Russell Mead’s Yule Tide Blog. Offering reflections on the meaning of Christmas and its relevance to the modern world, the Yule Blog has become a grand and important holiday tradition.
Walter Russell MeadDecember 24, 2017
