I should probably admit up front that I’ve been a huge James Bond fan ever since my older brother took me to see Live and Let Die at the age of nine. (I’m still not sure if my parents ever knew that.) So over Thanksgiving weekend, my wife and I planned an evening out and caught supper and the latest Bond flick, Skyfall. I should probably also admit that I think Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Sean Connery created the character 50 years ago. Along with most critics, I thought Skyfall was terrific, one of the better films in the franchise. No small part of that was the evolution of Bond. As in Casino Royale (Quantum of Solace,...

I don’t know about you, but when I think of the Christmas story, I think of, well, the Christmas story. There’s a kind of seamless whole that I have in my head made up of angels and shepherds and Mary and Joseph and the baby in the manger and the stable animals and the star and magi and all the rest. What I don’t think about is how I learned this story; how, that is, it was told to me. Certainly I learned a lot of it from the Bible, hearing the various – and distinct – portions of the story read from Matthew and Luke. But I also learned it from the Christmas carols. And from the manifold crèches in all shapes and sizes that I’ve...