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Title: The World's First Christmas: Jubilee 2000 by Mike Aquilina, Regis Flaherty, Donald W. Wuerl ISBN: 0-87973-314-4 Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 Format: Hardcover List Price(USD): $24.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Jubilee Joy to the World
Comment: It's Christmas time in the city. And if you think that's cause for celebration, you ought to see what's going on in a little cave on the outskirts -- the very epicenter of the extravaganza.

That's the theme underlying this collection of writings and artwork published by the Diocese of Pittsburgh to mark Jesus' 2,000th birthday. An ornamental Christmas keepsake in its own right, the colorful, coffee-table volume manages to evoke the season's warm festivity while putting its cultural customs in their proper place: at the service of the Gospel event they commemorate.

"Christmas decorations, the tree, exchanging gifts and enjoying other Christmas traditions are all important and joyful events, but we should never let them distract us from the truth that is at the very heart of the Christmas season," writes Pittsburgh Bishop Donald W. Wuerl in the book's introduction. "On the first Christmas day, God came among us in the person of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us. Nothing in human experience is more exciting than this truth, and no one has so changed history as has the infant son of Mary, who is also the Son of God."

The book's graphics are highlighted by full-page and inset displays of paintings by the masters -- Botticelli, Raphael, Grunewald, Fra Angelico -- while the text has been compiled from wide and varied sources spanning the centuries. Along with key Scripture passages and the lyrics of selected carols, here are homilies, liturgical readings, prayers, blessings, poems and reflections. The subject is just what happened in Bethlehem, circa 1 A.D., and among the luminaries who weigh in on the matter are St. John Chrysostom, St. Louis de Montfort, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Blessed Edith Stein, Caryll Houselander, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, St. Bonaventure, Pope St. Leo the Great and T.S. Eliot.

Also included are descriptions of popular customs and symbols, along with explanations of how each relates to historical observances of the birth of Christ. From the Christmas tree to the candy cane, from the hanging of stockings to the entry of St. Nicholas on the Christmas stage, all, directly or indirectly, situate us at the site where an unassuming Jewish girl has just given birth to a son.

"Dear children, as I write to you I am thinking of when, many years ago, I was a child like you," writes Pope John Paul II in a 1994 Christmas exhortation. "[W]hen the star of Bethlehem shone, I would hurry to the crib together with the other boys and girls to relive what happened 2,000 years ago in Palestine. We children expressed our joy mostly in song. How beautiful and moving are the Christmas carols which, in the tradition of every people, are sung around the crib! ... What joy and tenderness they express about the Divine Child who came into the world that Holy Night!"

The editors have chosen a decorative typeface that unnecessarily slows the eye in the prose passages. The payoff is its effect on the poetry. Especially intriguing is how even familiar verse, such as the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem," works here as silent reflection.

And as evangelical witness. "There's no doubt that ... conversions take place with greater frequency during the Christmas season," the editors write in one section's introduction. "It is on Christmas morning that churches ordinarily empty fill to overflowing." Put this book under the tree for someone who needs to make a little more room in his life for Christ after the tinsel and lights have come down.

David Pearson is features editor of the National Catholic Register.