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Signs of Life’s Christmas Festival 2006 - 12 events for 12 days before Christmas - features kids’ story time. Our talented readers will bring to life Christmas stories from the pages of classics and new tales to delight the younger set. Mom and Dad can shop the bookstore or art gallery, knowing that the kids are well occupied. From 1-4 pm.

What could be better than the sound of a french horn playing Christmas music?  How about four french horns, or maybe more?  Tonight, the Signs of Life’s Christmas Festival 2006 - 12 events for 12 days before Christmas brings you Carol Ney and friends all tooting their horns for a delightful evening of music.

Signs of Life’s Christmas Festival 2006 - 12 events for 12 days before Christmas - features a reader’s theater version of A Christmas Carol, described by Charles Dickens as his favorite work. If you’ve never participated in reader’s theater, you are in for a treat. OK, you’re in for a treat even if you have done reader’s theater before. We’ll ask for volunteers from the audience to read each part. No rehearsal, no props, whatever happens, happens - God bless us every one!

Signs of Life’s Christmas Festival 2006 - 12 events for 12 days before Christmas - features a time for making your own Christmas cards tonight at 7:30. Kids and adults can join gallery director James Schaefer in making beautiful creations to send Christmas wishes to friends and family. Bring something to cut with and something to color with.

To get a preview of what will happen tonight, you can watch interviews channel 49 in Topeka did with our gallery director James Schaefer and book manager Seth Toebben.

Signs of Life’s Christmas Festival 2006 - 12 events for 12 days before Christmas - features members of the KU Women’s Glee Club tonight at 7:30, presenting songs of the season.

And you can continue to bring in your non-perishable food items for the Christmas Community Can Collection to benefit the Leo Center.

Have you ever heard the claim that Christians are about as likely to divorce as the U.S. population at large? I think we church-goers tend to quote this statistic to shame ourselves into taking our marriage vows, and our faith, more seriously.

However, a new study indicates this common wisdom is not true, once you factor in church attendance that is.  In “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Equality, Equity, Commitment, and Women’s Marital Quality,” University of Virginia sociologists Steven L. Nock and W. Bradford Wilcox examine what makes women content in marriage.  In a recent article about this study in Christianity Today, the authors note “churchgoing evangelical Protestants, churchgoing Catholics, and churchgoing mainline Protestants are all significantly less likely to divorce . . . (than the general population) . . . between 35 and 50 percent less likely than Americans who attend church just nominally, just once or twice a year, or who don’t attend church at all. It is true that people who say they’ve had a born-again experience are about as likely to divorce as people who are completely secular.  But if you look at this through the lens of church attendance, you see a very different story.”

So, if you want to boost your chances for marital bliss, go to church. Often.

Never having been particularly PC here at Signs of Life, we’d like to recommend another fascinating, if controversial book. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, editor of the Conservative Book Club Elizabeth Kantor takes readers on a fascinating tour through great literature in all its politically incorrect glory. She includes a syllabus and a guide to the English literature education most people were denied in school. You’ll learn how Beowolf teaches us to admire heroes, Shakespeare shows how some choices are inherently destructive, and from Flannery O’Connor we learn that even modern American liberals aren’t immune to original sin. As a future dead white male, I’m delighted by this rehabilitation of those of my persuasion.

Islam is a religion of peace. This is a statement we’ve heard repeatedly from politicians and scholars since 9/11. In his new book The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer presents his case that the “religion of peace” mantra is at best a useful fiction and at worst a recipe for world disaster.

Spencer doesn’t purport to give an exhaustive biography of the prophet but focuses on the aspects of his life and teaching most relevant to 21st century geo-politics. Using extensive documentation from the sources that Muslims themselves consider most reliable, Spencer shows the truth about Muhammad’s convenient “revelations” justifying his own licentiousness; his joy in the brutal murders of his enemies; and above all, his clear marching orders to his followers to convert non-Muslims to Islam-or force them to live as inferiors under Islamic rule.

One of the best features of this book is Spencer’s concluding remarks in which he offers a concrete plan of action which diplomats and theologians could follow to avoid a worldwide, jihadist-induced holocaust.

While supplies last, you can come into our store in downtown Lawrence and get a free gift with purchase!

When you spend $50 or more with us during any visit this Christmas season, you’ll receive a complimentary copy of The Shine Man, a charming Christmas tale for children of all ages. Or you can purchase the book on sale for 50% off the list price of $17.

If your purchases total $70 or more, then our gift to you is this book of poetry: The Green Earth, by Luci Shaw. Shaw’s book of creation poems is also on sale. Regularly $20, while supplies last it is only $10. Both these books are great gift ideas!

Christmas Festival 2006! During the Christmas season, Signs of Life will present 12 events during 12 days before Christmas. There will be carol singing, Christmas-card making, music of all sorts, even a readers theater of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. For details, view the flyer, or check out our calendar. Also, look for the flyer as an insert in today’s Lawrence Journal-World newspaper.