For this Christmas, I’ve been turning over in my mind President Uchtdorf’s talk You Matter to Him. It is not a Christmas talk on its face. What it is is a meditation that starts with the brilliance of the night stars and moves to the paradox of the nothingness of man and the glory of man. I’ve read it a couple of times, and as I’ve done so, I’ve found myself thinking about a cold night with one brilliant star shining over the God of creation laying helpless in a manger.

My Christmas Writing

The Slaughter of the Innocents and Falls, Gardens, Deaths
– two reflection on tragedy and sadness at Christmas time. Nine Moons did something similar last year that I really enjoyed but it seems to have vanished.

Helpless as a Baby–what we learn from Christ taking on the feeble helplessness of an infant.

How we are Mary and We are Joseph and Mary and Holding the Messiah–three essays on being a father or a mother or a recipient of revelation. See also this brief meditation on the comparison between Mary and the tree of life.

Tithing Settlement 2008 and The Feast of Saint Tithing Settlement.

Christmas Devotional 2008

Mr. Krueger’s Christmas (Eve)

Lonely mission Christmases

The 6th Day of Christmas

Other Christmas Favorites

All six verses of Silent Night

Believing in Santa Claus and The Christmas Dress and Worshipping on Christmas Eve– (Russell Arben Fox)

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus

Christmas Bells, by Longfellow

Behold the Condescension of God! and O Tannenbaum (the Fowles Brothers)

Two Christmas Poems (KHH)

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times — some of the comments especially are painful and eye-opening

My Testimony, Christmas Morning

The Gift of the Magi.

The Christmas story from Little House on the Prairie.

Here’s a reworked post I did on this subject a few years back:

If Mormons had a liturgical year, the distinctively Mormon part of December would be tithing settlement, not a limp dutifulness like Joseph Smith’s birthday.

For me, at least, tithing settlement is part of the sweetness of Mormon life. Our oldest living daughter earned a little money this year and paid her tithing on it, so before we went we practiced what Bishop would ask her and what she should answer. When he did get down to her print-out, he asked her if it was a “full tithe.” She shook her head no and giggled. Then she caught our eyes and remembered what she was supposed to do. She sighed, took a deep breath, stood on her tiptoes, closed her eyes, and yelled “Yes!” Close enough.

Earlier, one of our good friends who is a poorer sister in late-middle age was signing up with us on the paper outside Bishop’s office. “I haven’t paid a full tithe this year,” she said wryly, ” do you think Bishop will chew me out?” He’s not averse to chewing people out, but he won’t chew her out, we know. Still, I was struck by the thought that while paying tithing requires faith and commitment, her going to take her lumps showed a kind of faith and commitment too. It was the most moving part of tithing settlement this year. Her spirit is willing and we pray next year her flesh, or her finances, will not be as weak.

Original post here. Additional thoughts on tithing settlement here.

Set aside the facile just-so evolutionary explanation.* What intrigues me is the implied corollary that couples with more kids are more likely to stay coupled, since the more kids, the more likelihood of having a son.

Could the Church’s encouragement to larger families and discouragement to divorce be synergistic? Perhaps even inspired?

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*I think the argument for evolution is sound; the argument that most evolutionary explanations are the purest invention is even sounder. If the facts were reversed and daughters make divorce less likely, you could equally well argue that “evolution” explained the result because daughters without dads in the homes were more likely to enter puberty early and be easy sexually (this is true, btw) and therefore fathers needed to be around to get their daughters better quality mating opportunities. Which is plausible enough, except that experience apparently doesn’t back it up. The evolutionary argument proves little to nothing.

In fact, evolution aside, not wanting my daughters to be 13-year old tramps is one of my principal reasons to stay married, the other being, as anyone who knows the Lovely One can attest, that in the connubial cards I was dealt five aces and even this lackwit has enough sense to clutch them.

One point that jumped out at me is that its young men, not young women, who are most at danger from leaving the Church. To the sorrow of feminists who really were hoping for more female apostasy as a weapon in their struggle. And to the sorrow of parents, who worry that their sons will get lost and their daughters will have trouble finding a suitable husband.

What the Church always knew and what the Gospel always taught, but what the world forgot, is that sinners want to sin. You can’t get rid of sin by redefining sinful behavior as acceptable. The desire to rebel against God and society will seek out new sins.

We Mormons have tried hard to keep the dirty words dirty, but we’ve failed. Well, if we can’t stop the world from being stupid, we can at least get a good laugh out of it. It cracks me up everytime I see someone underline the expletive, in case we didn’t get that it was supposed to be shocking.

What’s next, I wonder? The problem is that there are so few taboos left except for PC. What the nigger! Fag you, you housewife cracker-fagger!

Or, the way things are shaping up, maybe the cussin’ of the year 2050 will be more along the lines of debt, deficit, baby boomer, birth dearth, and inflation. When the guy in the car I just bumped informs me that my car’s drive programming is full of debt, perhaps I will courteously invite him to inflate himself, the childless boomer.

Or perhaps Joseph’s name will really, truly be had for good or for ill. When the Prophet starts being invoked in vain, that’s when we know we’ve truly arrived. When the fellow tells another fellow that by Joseph, this new gene therapy is the covenant, we’ll know the millennium can’t be far off.

Women are, of course, wicked and selfish, short-sighted and stupid, manipulable and morally impoverished. Just like men are, my biddies. So the results of letting women choose to kill their own children were always going to be predictably bad.

Women tend to kill women babies, for instance. Around the world the kill rates for little girls are higher than for little boys. And by “around the world” I mean in the US and Europe. Don’t even think about China or India or the Middle East.

The defenders of choice have always tried to keep women poorly informed about the choice, so that the baser angels of their nature would prevail (or failing that, their boyfriends’). Thus the opposition to waiting periods and informed consent laws. The temple guards of the sacred institution of choice are now also trying to prevent women from knowing the sex of their baby. The new abortion ideology is that no one should interfere with a woman’s right to choose–except abortion activists, feminists, lawyers, doctors, governments, and EU busybodies.

Women, it seems, were decreed by nature and the NGO to be kept ignorant, barefoot, and on the gurney.