Merry Christmas 2007

Christmas Bells
( by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow )

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

A real Christmas story (3)

Muslim insurgents behead 14-year-old Christian boy
World Net Daily ^ | October 31, 2006

A website in Assyria is confirming that a 14-year-old Christian boy who was working a 12-hour shift maintaining an electric generator has been murdered by Muslim insurgents.

The Assyrian International News Agency said the tragedy was reported by an Assyrian language web page at www.ankawa.com.

The youth was identified as Ayad Tariq, who lived in Baqouba, Iraq, and was at work on Oct. 21 when a group of "disguised Muslim insurgents" went into the power plant shortly after his shift began at 6 a.m.

The website reported the insurgents asked him for his identification and, according to other witnesses who hid and stayed alive to report on the attack, questioned his identification card's reference to him as a "Christian."

Are you truly a "Christian sinner," they asked.

"Yes, I am Christian but I am not a sinner," he replied.

The insurgents then called him a "dirty Christian sinner," grabbed his limbs and held them while beheading him, the witnesses reported.

They were shouting, "Allahu akbar! Allahu Akbar!" during the murder, witnesses said.

An organization called AssyrianChristians.com said they are the indigenous people of Iraq, with a population that has been in the Middle East from the time of Christ.

However, they have faced a number of purges by the region's rulers over time, including the present attacks by powerful Islamic factions across Iran, Iraq and neighboring nations, officials said.

Only two generations back, Assyrian Christians made up 20 percent of the population of the Middle East, but during the Assyrian Genocide of 1915, an estimated three million Christians were slaughtered there, the organization said.

Current estimates are that there are about 2.5 million Assyrian Christians in Iraq.

Kenneth Scott LaTourette wrote in "A History of Christianity" that the Assyrian Christians became the first nation to accept Christianity, and one of the largest missionary-sending peoples in Christian history.

"The Assyrian Christians are one of the last remaining Christian communities in the Middle East," said Rev. Ken Joseph Jr., of the Assyrian Christians organization.

Tens of thousands of Assyrian Christians have fled their traditional homelands in recent months, officials confirmed.

A real Christmas Story (2)

'Leave, crusaders, or have your heads cut off'
By Aqeel Hussein in Mosul and Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:37am GMT 24/12/2006

The snow has already settled on the mountains further north, but the Christians of the Iraqi city of Mosul are scared to put festive decorations outside their homes this year. Their ancestors settled here in the 1st century AD, yet as teacher Jamal Fadi has discovered, some of their Muslim neighbours want this Christmas to be their last.

"A letter was delivered to my door with two bullets placed on top of it," said Mr Fadi, 32, standing watchfully in the neat garden of his two-storey villa. "It said: 'Leave, crusaders, or we will cut your heads off.' They want us to go from Mosul completely."

After months as a nervous bystander to the spiralling civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims, Iraq's Christian minority now faces the spectre of sectarian violence coming to their traditional home city. They fear that al Qaeda-backed zealots within the Sunni community, which forms the bulk of Mosul's one million population, want to end nearly 1,500 years of co-existence with an onslaught of ethnic cleansing.

Residents say that the campaign, which they claim has intensified in recent weeks, is prompted by Sunni fears of a complete Shia takeover of Baghdad in coming years. In response, Mosul would be turned into a northern capital for a Sunni-dominated enclave, which would include Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit and stretch south to the anti-American towns of Fallujah and Ramadi.

The fact that no such blueprint has been endorsed by the Iraqi government is of little comfort to Christians. The plan's architects, they fear, are capable of enforcing it themselves through threats and indoctrination alone. For proof, they say, look no further than playgrounds, where Christian and Sunni Muslim children have played together for decades.

A real Christmas Story (1)

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong schoolboy who died in a traffic accident has brought festive hope to at least seven other patients through the rare mass donation of a large number of his vital organs.

Fourteen-year-old Miu Chi-ho died from brain injuries after being hit by a bus several days ago, but doctors were able to save the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, skin, bones and corneas of the healthy and athletic teen-ager.

"There were at least seven recipients of the organs," said a spokeswoman with Hong Kong's Hospital Authority.

Miu's 41 year-old mother, a single parent on social welfare, ignored the protests of superstitious relatives in insisting on the donations to "bring hope to other families," Hong Kong's Apple Daily newspaper reported Friday.

"Even though I'm devastated, I want to do something for society," the paper quoted her as saying.

"(My son) is very great. Even though he's left us ... we can still hear him breathe, and his heart beat. He's already become an angel."

Doctors hailed Miu's case as an example to others in Hong Kong where organ donorship is traditionally frowned upon given the Chinese belief in keeping bodies whole to allow the deceased to rest in heavenly peace.

"This is a very encouraging event... we're desperately in need of organs," said Dr. Choi Kin, president of the Hong Kong Medical Association.

Last year, only 4.2 of every million people in Hong Kong donated organs to science upon dying, a fraction of the rate in the U.S., according to the Apple Daily.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.