1. From the Art of Manliness a piece about Winston Churchill's odd but rigid routine:

“A visitor to Chartwell, his home in the English countryside, might have been forgiven for missing this routine, or for thinking it disorderly. Yet while his daily schedule was quite unusual, it was in fact very strict. As one of the researchers who assisted Winston in writing his books recalled, “He was totally organized, almost like a clock. His routine was absolutely dictatorial. He set himself a ruthless timetable every day and would get very agitated, even cross, if it was broken.””

2. From Elise Hilton at the Acton Institute, some thoughts on why "Made in China" may really be saying, "Made by Christian slave labor":

“All of us own something that says, “Made in China.” As the world’s largest economy, China churns out everything from tourist trinkets to sophisticated software. The People’s Republic is “on track to produce $17.6 trillion of goods and services this year,” according to Josh Gelernter at National Review Online. While that may be good news for the global economy, Gelernter says it’s very bad news for many Chinese. They are slaves.”

3. Economist Anne Bradley from the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics offers some perspective for balancing materialism and generosity this Christmas season:

“If the recent trends prove true, material goods will play a large role in our holidays. Many point to capitalism as the cause of this increasingly materialistic attitude toward Christmas.

As Christians, how do we reconcile the tangible effects of capitalism on a season marking one of the most impactful events of all history?”

4. Timothy George writes on Bonhoeffer in Advent at First Things:

“The year was 1943, and another Advent had dawned for Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer loved Advent and had often preached sermons on this holy season of waiting and hope as a metaphor for the entire Christian life. Just one year earlier, during the Advent of 1942, Bonhoeffer had written a circular letter to some of his friends and former students.

’The joy of God goes through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye, but it finds life precisely within it.’

Those words took on a deeper meaning in December 1943 as Bonhoeffer found himself one of eight hundred prisoners awaiting trial in Berlin’s Tegel military prison.”