By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM) – World War I was a gruesome conflict, introducing horrific combat weapons that had not been imagined before: flamethrowers which burned men alive where they stood; machine guns that fired 500 rounds per minute at a distance of 2,000 yards (indiscriminately cutting down infantrymen as they charged enemy positions); and mustard gas (as well as chlorine, bromine and phosgene variants) that killed and permanently disabled troops with such lethality that chemical weapons were subsequently banned by international treaty. Six months into the grueling battle along the Western Front (the nearly 440 miles of dueling trench lines that stretched from the border of Switzerland through Belgium to the North Sea) Christmas came (after an estimated one million deaths in that brief time of war), and with it a miracle of sorts. On the eve of Christmas, in the mud and muck amid the misery of war, soldiers on both sides of “no man’s land” (the territory between the opposing armies, marked by barbed wires and pocked with craters from exploded artillery shells) began to blend their voices to the tune of the carols that in times past they would have been singing with family in … [Read more...]

By Kelly Boggs, special to the Baptist Message DALLAS (LBM) -- “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the beloved animated television program, turns sixty this year, and it is hard to imagine that it almost did not air. Network executives thought it moved too slowly for a Christmas special. They also were convinced that the absence of a laugh track, a staple of 1960-era comedies, would be the kiss of death. To further complicate matters, the man behind the cast of animated characters insisted upon using real kids for the voiceovers, and as a result, only a couple of the children who were cast had any acting experience. However, what most concerned the executives at CBS was the religious content. The climax of the 30-minute program focused on a main character quoting Scripture, and the executive producer insisted that the Bible could not be read on network television. But the creator of what has become a Christmas classic staunchly refused to edit or otherwise water down the content. Despite network executives’ concerns, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” made its television debut on Thursday, Dec. 9, 1965. The result: More than 15 million homes tuned in and it captured nearly half of the possible audience. Indeed, the week it … [Read more...]