The intense preparation for Christmas that is part of the commercialization of the holiday has blurred the traditional liturgical distinction between Advent and the Christmas season, as can be seen by the placement of Christmas trees in sanctuaries well before December 25.
In other words, Christmas offered an intense, all-encompassing and possibly mind-altering experience very similar to that provided by the cinema.
* oh, christmas tree, oh, Christmas tree!
The fact that the boy left "a year ago at Christmas" makes everything more intense, as do the song's sighing acoustic guitars and sad, shuffling beats.
But if clever, literate and intense rhymes are your thing, this 26-minute collection is a pre-Christmas treat.
Yet even as he was pulling off his greatest sporting coup this week, his business activities were coming under intense scrutiny.A-Rod is not the only beneficiary of Mr Hicks's pre-Christmas largesse.
"I grew up with Charles Dickens AA Christmas Carol but in my mind's eye I always imagined the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future as much darker and more intense than most adaptations.
Another "Christmas Carol".
