I’ll be back on January 5th. Later that night, Emily returned home, warmed her hands around a cup of tea, and set the original lantern on her windowsill—lit, as it had been meant to be. She unfolded the letter once more. Outside, snow drifted across the quiet street. Then she saw one lantern glow. Then another, and another, until the...

Emily returned to the attic the next evening. The attic felt different, not mysterious, purposeful. She unlocked the small door again and stood for a moment, looking at the shelves lined with lanterns. She counted at least twenty-four before she stopped. They had not been forgotten. They had been prepared. One by one, she carried the lanterns down carefully, setting...

Every December, I look forward to reading and watching Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. While there are countless versions of the classic, I always return to the film with Reginald Owen as Scrooge, not only because Owen embodies the part, but also because it features Gene Lockhart as Bob Cratchit. A brilliant character actor with a gift for sincerity, Lockhart brings...

I recently read about a group of explorers who located a ship deep beneath the dark, cold waters off Antarctica: a vessel whose very name says a great deal about the man who once led her. Ernest Shackleton’s greatness didn’t come from a great feat. It came from the humility to set aside his own ambition the moment his men...

During his years in wartime London, U.S. Ambassador John Gilbert Winant absorbed the suffering around him. He was known for walking the streets during the Blitz, talking with ordinary people, sharing in their daily fears, helping to strengthen their resolve. Londoners remembered him for his compassion and accessibility. Historians consistently note how deeply he internalized the city’s suffering. He carried...

That line from The Little Prince by French aviator and author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the essence of the story and the essence of what we too often forget: that the most meaningful truths, character and love, can’t be photographed or seen. They have to be felt. You might not think that what many consider a children’s story has anything...

I happened across Frances Perkins while searching files at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. She was the first woman in U.S. history to serve in a cabinet post, as Secretary of Labor under the most consequential president of the era. She shined brightest, not in seeking headlines, but in advancing the rights and well-being of ordinary Americans. Born in...

When I first read Common Sense in college—admittedly, more out of assignment than interest—I understood its place in history but not its wisdom. I recognized that Thomas Paine had written something important, but I didn’t yet grasp why it mattered so deeply: that his words were not just a call for freedom from a king’s rule, but a moral awakening—a...

“The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.” Those words, spoken by Erika Kirk at her husband Charlie’s memorial service, cut through grief and politics with startling clarity. They were not about party or power. They were about...

The murder of Charlie Kirk–gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University–is another brutal reminder of how political beliefs can metastasize into hatred. On the night of April 4, 1968, after learning that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy stood on the back of a flatbed truck before a largely African American crowd in Indianapolis...