Historic Holy Thorn tree cut down in Glastonbury
A historic tree of religious significance in Glastonbury has been cut down overnight, prompting a police investigation.

The Holy Thorn tree on Wearyall Hill is thought to have been planted by Joseph of Arimathea nearly 2,000 years ago.

Wendy Plumtree, who lives nearby, said: “It’s like one of those moments where you close the door again and open it to see if your eyes are deceiving you.” Read full story from bbc.co.uk

A church ‘brought to its knees’
GORE Township – Deep in the woods of the lower Laurentians, tucked into one corner of a gravel road that goes nowhere in particular, in a place so remote as to be without power lines, there is a church. Rather, there was a church.

St. John’s Shrewsbury, built in 1858 and the last remaining building of a village that vanished decades ago, was an Anglican church until Saturday.

Shortly before noon that day in what is now part of the municipality of Gore, St. John’s was deconsecrated in a ceremony that also involved the sprinkling of holy water in its cemetery to cleanse the grounds of all traces of “the craft of Satan” or human malice.

Witches, waves of misguided ghost-hunters and self-proclaimed spiritualists, along with common vandals, have swarmed the church in recent years. Read full story from montrealgazette.com

Holiday Shopping: What to get for the witch in your life (VIDEO)
New Hope is well-known as a magnet for those who live the Wiccan lifestyle, so it’s a great place to hunt for gifts should your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, kid, uncle, cousin, partner or friend have high expectations for their personal holiday witch list. Read full story from buckslocalnews.com

Salvation Army rejects ‘black magic’ toy donations
The Salvation Army is causing a stir over refusing to take donations of toys that it believes promote black magic.

The Christian aid agency collects thousands of toys every Christmas through its Toy Mountain campaign.

But a Salvation Army volunteer who was helping put together toy hampers for less fortunate children says he was given strict orders not to put certain toys in those hampers. Read full story from ctv.ca

Chaplains Worry About Careers If ‘Don’t Ask’ Is Lifted
While most military personnel see no problem serving with openly gay comrades, some military chaplains are bristling. Many of the 3,000 chaplains are evangelical and believe repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy may affect how they do their jobs.

Ronald Crews, a retired Army colonel and chaplain, works with active chaplains from his evangelical denomination. A few months ago, he began asking military chaplains what they thought about repealing don’t ask, don’t tell. One response in particular bothered him. The chaplain had just returned from a briefing by a general about the impact of changing the policy and asked if the military would protect him if he asserted that homosexuality is a sin.

“And the response he received from this four-star general was, ‘If you cannot accept the changes coming, you have an option: You can resign your commission,’ ” Crews says. Read full story from npr.org

Divided We Fall? The Role of Debate in the Environmental Movement
When I asked, in my own skeptic atheist way, whether we must embrace the sacred to survive peak oil, commenter robertrfiske urged us to not “feed that beast” of division. After all, he argued, ideological differences will be exploited by opponents of the green movement to bring us down. We heard similar arguments when Lloyd covered Bill McDonough’s trashing by Fast Company, Anonymous stated that the magazine had just “just hurt the movement quite significantly for no reason”. Which all gets me to wondering—what is the proper role of debate within the environmental movement?

I do understand the point that these commenters are trying to make. With anti-environmentalists gunning for us greenies at every turn (metaphorically speaking, for now at least), there is a danger that the movement for sustainability could descend into infighting and ideological warfare, akin to the infamous “Judean People’s Front” scene in the Life of Brian. (Look it up on YouTube if you don’t get the reference.) Read full story from treehugger.com

A Krampus Christmas, the Original Santa
Most children are excited about the arrival of Santa, the jolly old fellow in the furry red suit who travels around the world on Christmas night bringing gifts to all the children who have been nice and leaving switches and coal for all the children who have been naughty.

In fact, the modern American concept of Jolly old St, Nick, or Santa Claus is an amalgamation that has its roots in Old Germanic paganism.

Christmas is loaded with Germanic and northern European traditions, some of which, in different forms predate Christianity’s arrival in northern Europe. The use of Evergreen trees, Yule logs and hanging mistletoe are a few of these traditions.  Mistletoe was once known for killing “Baldr”, the Norse god of light and beauty. Of course today, we use it as an excuse to steal a kiss. Thank goodness things do change. Read full story from riverdalepark.patch.com