Following the natural order of things, my paternal great-grandfather died well before I was born. I bear the same name he did, except, of course, he was Pietro. A Calabrese who left his homeland for the confounding strangeness of this new world, he came over on the... Read More →

  You may have heard it said—even in a sermon, which should be free of such speculation—that Christians chose December 25 to celebrate Jesus’ birth because that was the day the Romans held a festival celebrating the sun god. The idea, oft proclaimed, is that Christianity... Read More →