Q: There was an online article “The Religion of Whatever,” pointing out that religion is “whatever” we make it. What is the difference between “professing Christ” and “possessing Christ”? — A.C. A: ...

The actual man whom our modern Santa is based on, was St. Nicholas of Myra, sometimes called Nicholas the Wonderworker. The actual St. Nicholas is said to have been born to an affluent Greek-speaking ...

The scene: a graduate seminar in literature sometime in the eerily becalmed days of the mid-1990s, when for an aspirant to an academic job, the future seemed poised to break in one of two ...

This week is significant, for religious reasons it has not always existed. It was in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII instituted a major reform of the calendar, which has since been almost universally adopted.

Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? Professing Literature, Gerald Graff’s history of American English ...

At this time of year, when we recall the formal founding of the United States, it is worth pondering the world which produced this nation. It was a time when the majority of the population did ...

Donald Trump (a professing Christian), Mike Johnson (a professing Christian), and the Senate and House (with many professing Christians) seem to be okay with separating children from their families in ...

Today, if one were to ask to ask about an “elf” or “elves” there are probably two answers that would come back. One would certainly be the cheerful and hardworking crew of Santa Claus at his toy ...

Of the character sketches that the English satirist Samuel Butler wrote in the mid-seventeenth century—among them “A Degenerate Noble,” “A Huffing Courtier,” “A Small Poet,” and “A Romance Writer”—the ...