Support Our Community of Authors while Shining Your Light in Our World

WHETHER YOU CELEBRATE HANUKKAH or CHRISTMAS—we know you’re looking for gifts for family and friends. This year, please consider a “double gift.” By that we mean: Giving “our books” not only will light up the lives of your loved ones, as they read, but your purchases also will help support our community of writers, whose creative energies flow through these books.

Holidays & Festivals

A St. Nicholas Update—

AS WE REPORTED LAST WEEK, this year’s December 6 Feast of St. Nicholas represents a historic milestone for fans of the “St. Nicholas Center”—the vast database of St. Nicholas fun that Michigan-based Carol Myers has been offering to families around the world for many years. This year marks the moving of Carol Myers’ St. Nicholas resources to its permanent home at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. Check out our story, last week, describing the big move and a new exhibition on St. Nicholas the seminary will be dedicating on December 17.

THE UPDATE: Many readers asked us, last week, if the seminary will be streaming the dedication events on December 17 so fans of St. Nicholas everywhere can watch this milestone. The answer is: Yes! The seminary staff suggests that anyone interested in streaming the event should visit the VTS homepage that day, where they will find a link.

And—the meaning of “Advent”—

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3 is the official start of the Western Christian Christmas season. As usual, Stephanie Fenton’s column about Advent also includes links to other helpful online resources. Want to create an Advent Wreath or an Advent Calendar yourself? She’s got us covered.

Hanukkah takes on a solemn resolve this year

WITH A RISE IN ANTISEMITISM WORLDWIDE, Jewish families will be lighting their Hanukkah candles with a solemn resolve to protect religious freedom, this year. Holidays & Festivals columnist Stephanie Fenton has the story—as well as links to creative resources for everything from latkes to creating a crafts with kids.

A Check Up May Save Your Life

HOWARD BROWN, author of Shining Brightly, is widely sought after as a motivational speaker on finding the resiliency to fight cancer—hard-earned wisdom after having survived State IV cancer twice! From December 4 through 8, this year, Howard also is serving as an ambassador spreading the news of “Cancer Screen Week.” This program, co-sponsored by such major organizations as the American Cancer Society and Stand Up to Cancer, provides free resources, educational materials and online graphics to help promote screening.

WANT TO SEE ALL OF THE UPCOMING HOLIDAYS & FESTIVALS?—It’s easy to find our annual calendar of global observances. Just remember the web address: InterfaithHolidays.com

Click on this Netflix poster to read Ed McNulty’s review of the new film, Rustin.

Click on this image to explore the November 2023 issue of Visual Parables Journal, packed with film reviews and discussion guides of movies including Killers of the Flower Moon, My Sailor My Love, Nowhere and The Life of Bayard Rustin.

Faith & Film

ED McNULTY, for decades, has published reviews, magazine articles and books exploring connections between faith and film. Most of his work is freely published. Ed supports his work by selling the Visual Parables Journal, a monthly magazine packed with film reviews and discussion guides. This resource is used nationwide by individuals who love the movies and by educators, clergy and small-group leaders.

Here are some of Ed’s most recent free reviews and columns:

RUSTIN—Ed writes, “The overlooked civil rights activist Bayard Rustin (Colman Domingo), often called the architect of the 1963 March on Washington, is finally getting his due, thanks to the new film directed by George C. Wolfe.”
PLUS—Ed has written a second column about the challenges of rediscovering Rustin’s crucial role in the civil rights movement.
JOAN BAEZ: I AM A NOISE—Ed urges us to see this new film and writes, “Like most of my generation, I loved Joan Baez, her clear soprano voice uniting us as we listened to her at civil rights events or played her records alone in our rooms at night sometimes so drawn in that we sang along.”
ANATOMY OF A FALL—”French director-cowriter Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is a fascinating courtroom drama that will leave you wondering.”
THE HOLDOVERS—Ed gives 5 stars to this unusual “Christmas movie” about a disgruntled teacher (Paul Giamatti) stuck with students who can’t go home for the holidays.
JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM—Ed writes, “Director/co-writer Adam Anders and writer Peter Barsocchini have served up an interesting Nativity Story by combining the Gospel accounts of Christ’s birth and then adding to them a lot of fanciful material that includes singing and dancing.”
ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE—Of this four-part Netflix series, based on the best-selling novel, Ed writes, “I fell under its spell and found it hard to wait for the next episode.”
THE UNKNOWN SAINT—”Moroccan screenwriter and director Alaa Eddine Aljem’s first feature film was his nation’s entry into the Oscar race in 2021. And a worthy one it is, serving as a drolly comic morality tale of greed and human planning gone awry.”
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON—”We are indebted to master filmmaker Martin Scorsese that during the process of co-writing this film he switched from making it a police procedural show centered on a white detective and focused instead on the Osage Indians who were being victimized by the greed of their white neighbors.”
MEDICINE MAN: THE BRIAN BROCK STORY—”In director Paul Michael Angell’s documentary, we discover a man whose concern for health care has benefitted hundreds of thousands of people, even though he was not a doctor.”