If you have 10 minutes to spare, consider giving a listen to John Piper's Christmas poem "The Innkeeper". It's one of my favorites and still moves me to tears. He wrestles with the most disturbing of Christmas stories - Herod's decree to kill all the infant boys in Bethlehem in Matthew 2.

Easily the greatest and most popular Christmas TV special is "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Several years ago, Lee Habib at the National Review wrote about the back story for the special and how it almost never happened. It's a fascinating read. Charles Schulz was a devout Christian who fought powerful TV executives in order to present the true meaning of Christmas. Click here to read the article.