{"id":274,"date":"2008-12-25T22:30:30","date_gmt":"2008-12-26T05:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=274"},"modified":"2009-11-21T21:33:41","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T05:33:41","slug":"christmas-roundup-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/25\/christmas-roundup-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Roundup, 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an unusually moving story, the AP <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,472846,00.html\">covers<\/a> soldiers in Iraq spending their second consecutive Christmas away from their families (as they continue on their 15-month deployment).\u00a0 For some, it is their third in four years away from home.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A lot of guys struggle to find meaning in Christmas. I keep reminding them what it&#8217;s about. It&#8217;s a season of hope,&#8221; said chaplain Capt. Matt Hemrick, of Belmont, North Carolina, on Christmas Eve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Both President <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2008\/12\/20081223-11.html\">Bush<\/a> and President-elect <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2008\/12\/24\/obama-offers-appreciation-military-christmas-eve\/\">Obama<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/change.gov\/newsroom\/entry\/a_season_of_giving_a_sense_of_common_purpose\/\">text and video<\/a>) offered Christmas messages to the troops.\u00a0\u00a0Interestingly, both also referenced George Washington&#8217;s Christmas night crossing of the Deleware, as did the Joint Chiefs of Staff just <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=271\">a few days ago<\/a>&#8211;though the current Commander-in-Chief and his incoming replacement still managed to use the word &#8220;Christmas&#8221; when referring to December 25th.<\/p>\n<p>President Bush also offered a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2008\/12\/20081224.html\">message<\/a> for Kwanzaa.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"1\">As\u00a0also covered at the <a href=\"http:\/\/religionclause.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/president-marks-christmas-in-statement.html\">Religion Clause<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an unusually moving story, the AP covers soldiers in Iraq spending their second consecutive Christmas away from their families (as they continue on their 15-month deployment).\u00a0 For some, it is their third in four years away from home. &#8220;A lot of guys struggle to find meaning in Christmas. I keep reminding them what it&#8217;s about. It&#8217;s a season of [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[4,2,10],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","category-culture","tag-churchandstate","tag-military","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}