Walter Russell Mead’s Yule Blog has been a Christmas tradition since The American Interest’s “Via Meadia” blog first published it for the 2009–10 Christmastide. This wonderful, if sometimes laid-aside, season in the Christian calendar runs from Christmas Eve to Epiphany (January 6). Mead’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 host the Yule Blog. Such excitement is appropriate. 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 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!
Christmas is important to Christians because from their point of view the Baby Jesus is the meaning of Christmas, and the meaning of Christmas is the meaning of life.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 6, 2025
The Gospels occupy a kind of center point in human culture as a whole: products of a particular time and place, but comprehensible to all.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 5, 2025
If we leave religion out of our national conversation, we end up with a vapid conversation that doesn’t address the deepest realities that move most of the people in this country.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 4, 2025
To get any insight at all into what Jesus’ childhood and upbringing were like, you have to do something that sometimes makes Protestants uncomfortable: study Mary.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 3, 2025
The flawed human race, trapped in a cycle of cascading pain and wrong, is what and who God is bound and determined to love; the question is, How can He do it?
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 2, 2025
The Christmas story suggests that we can somehow try to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part.
Walter Russell MeadJanuary 1, 2025
It is a terrible scandal, but there is no way to separate the Trinity from Christmas. God is One; God is Three; the baby Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, come to earth to save sinners and open the door to a new kind of relationship between human beings and God
Walter Russell MeadDecember 31, 2024
Whether or not we believe in God, we want to do something real with our lives. We have one itch that mere scratching won’t fix, and that is the itch to understand what life is all about and to live meaningfully by the measures that really count.
Walter Russell MeadDecember 30, 2024
Why do Christians and so many other people believe in an invisible Ruler and Creator of the universe—and then how does the Christian idea of God differ from the others?
Walter Russell MeadDecember 29, 2024
