Hugo Chavez has a new theory: that the US has developed a secret technology and is using it to give cancer to left wing Latin American rulers that we don’t like.  After all, Fidel Castro, the Hero of Venezuela himself, the president of Paraguay, the current and former presidents of Brazil and now Cristina Kirchner […]

Five go-old rings!Happy fifth day of Christmas, and welcome back to the 2011 Yule Blog, where we aim to keep the holiday fires burning right up through Twelfth Night on January 6.Yesterday King Herod’s massacre of every child in Bethlehem under the age of two shocked us out of the idea that Christmas is basically a […]

We are taking a brief break with posts this week. I’d like to wish all my readers all the best for this holiday season and in the new year. Regular posting will resume next week.

So: they ‘wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.’  What is that supposed to be about?Manger is the French word meaning “to eat”; a manger is a place where you put hay and similar things for the animals in a barn to eat. The swaddling clothes were used to wrap up […]

It is not quite the most controversial verse in the Bible, but Luke 1:35 comes close. Mary has just replied to the angel Gabriel’s statement that she will be the mother of the Messiah with a question of her own: “How shall this be,” she says in the words of the King James Version, “seeing […]

[The traditional Via Meadia Yule Blog continues today with the third of the Thirteen Posts of Christmas.  From Christmas Eve through to Twelfth Night (the feast of the Epiphany), we explore the Christmas story and the ideas behind the celebration.]In Matthew, the Christmas story and its immediate sequel runs from Chapter One, verse one through […]

Merry Christmas and happy holiday to all! We are having a tense morning at the ancestral Mead home today, jumping whenever the telephone rings. There’s an old South Carolina custom that when two friends or relations greet one another on Christmas morning, the first one who says “Christmas gift!” gets to select one of the […]

[It’s Christmas Eve today and time for the oldest tradition at Via Meadia: our annual Yule Blog when we present the thirteen posts of Christmas running from Christmas Eve through Twelfth Night. During this holiday season in 2011-2012 there will be some light ordinary blogging as well and in January we will return to a […]

We already have 1930s style economic problems in much of Europe; is fascism next? If the current Hungarian government gets its way, maybe so.  The government of Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party, is pushing the country away from democracy and toward authoritarian nationalist rule with anti-Semitic undertones. A draconian […]

The Armenian genocide has become a serious sticking point between the French and Turks. As our readers probably know, Turkey refuses to officially recognize the massacre of Armenians during and after WWI as a “genocide.” Paris takes another view, and last night legislatures voted to make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide. Readers […]