Blog search

A bidding prayer for Christmas, A. D. 2023

Edited from the version originally published on December 25, 2012 Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. This Advent (2023) I renewed an earlier attempt to turn the 4-arm, 5-globe reproduction Victorian streetlamp in front of our house into a kind of Advent candelabra. I installed three purple...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 25, 2023 10:56 PM

Sapulpa Route 66 Christmas Chute, Rhema Lights final nights

The Route 66 Christmas Chute on Dewey Avenue in downtown Sapulpa, Oklahoma, has just two more nights to run, but it continues to be a popular attraction two months after its opening on November 3, 2022. Ten overhanging steel structures decorated with a variety of themes stand in the...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 31, 2022 12:13 PM

A bidding prayer for Christmas, A. D. 2022

Edited from the version originally published on December 25, 2012 Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 24, 2022 11:57 PM

A bidding prayer for Christmas, A. D. 2020

Edited from the version originally published on December 25, 2012 Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 24, 2020 11:43 PM

A bidding prayer for Christmas, A. D. 2018

Edited from the version originally published on December 25, 2012 Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 25, 2018 9:48 PM

A bidding prayer for Christmas, A. D. 2017

Edited from the version originally published on December 25, 2012 Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 25, 2017 10:11 PM

Benjamin Netanyahu wishes you a Merry Christmas

A message from the Prime Minister of Israel from the courtyard of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem: To all of our Christian friends around the world, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I send you these greetings from Jerusalem. I'm standing in the courtyard of this magnificent International...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 24, 2016 2:48 AM

"To buy us thrones He in a manger lay"

As on the night before this blessed morn, A troop of angels unto shepherds told, Where in a stable He was lowly born, Whom nor the earth, nor heav'n of heav'ns can hold. Thro' Bethlem rung this news at their return; Yea, angels sung that "God with us" was...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 25, 2015 1:23 AM

A bidding prayer for Christmas, A. D. 2013

Edited from the version originally published on December 25, 2012 Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 25, 2013 12:45 AM

Mele Kalikimaka!

Think warm thoughts with Bing, LaVerne, Patty, and Maxene:...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 24, 2013 10:24 PM

Delta's merry safety video

I hadn't flown Delta in over a year -- wasn't happy with the way a delay and missed connection at Atlanta was handled -- and my winding up on a Delta flight this time was accidental, the result of AA's problems at DFW. But it gave me a chance to...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 11, 2013 4:26 PM

Tulsa blog roundup, 2012/12/26

Via TashaDoesTulsa, This Land Press's Do What Tulsa has a list of large-scale Christmas light displays in and around Tulsa. See them while you can. Do What also has a list of New Year's Eve events in Tulsa, ranging from casual to fancy. (The Oklahoma Swing Syndicate dance looks like...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 26, 2012 6:05 PM

A bidding prayer for Christmas

Merry Christmas to anyone who happens by BatesLine today. As a Holland Hall high school student, I attended and sang in the annual service of Christmas lessons and carols at Trinity Episcopal Church, modeled after the annual Christmas Eve service from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge. At the beginning...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 25, 2012 3:35 PM

Christmas choristers, brass, and organ at Trinity Episcopal Church, Friday and Sunday

Trinity Episcopal Church, 5th and Cincinnati in downtown Tulsa, will host two concerts this weekend featuring beautiful Christmas music in its Gothic Revival sanctuary. On Friday night, December 21, 2012, at 7:30 pm, the Tulsa Boy Singers will perform a concert of Christmas and winter music Tickets are $10,...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 19, 2012 9:32 PM

Tulsa Christmas Parade clears up any confusion

Early in 2011, Tulsan Josh McFarland, disappointed that the traditional downtown Christmas parade had dropped the word "Christmas" from its name, felt impelled to take action and setup an alternative parade, a parade unembarrassed to acknowledge that "the reason for the season" is the commemoration of the birth of Jesus...

Posted by Michael Bates on September 23, 2012 2:58 PM

Christmas dissent

Brian Ervin, former reporter (and a darned good one) for Urban Tulsa Weekly, has started a blog called TheThirdHelix.com, and his first entry asks some tough questions of his fellow Christians about Christmas: Jesus said, "Anyone who loves their father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me;...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 29, 2011 1:20 AM

Roundup 2011/12/28

I got some potpourri for Christmas, so here's some potpourri for you -- an assortment of interesting articles from the last couple of weeks. Photo by Lathyrus on Flickr Warner Todd Huston: The newspaper typo that began NORAD's tradition of tracking Santa on Christmas eve in 1955. James Lileks invites...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 28, 2011 10:21 PM

Tulsa Christmas parade from the 1940s

Jack Frank, maker of many wonderful films about Tulsa history, has posted home movie footage of a Christmas parade in downtown Tulsa, from sometime in the late 1940s. The vantage point is on the east side of Main Street, a hundred feet or so south of 6th Street, looking west...

Posted by Michael Bates on December 26, 2011 12:56 AM

Merry Christmas

... from the extended Bates family to your family. Photo by Cole Elijah Cunningham, featuring Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus at Philbrook....

Posted by Michael Bates on December 25, 2011 12:16 AM

Terry Gilliam's Christmas Card

A bit of fun from 1968 -- a short film by Terry Gilliam, who would become, in 1969, the animator for Monty Python's Flying Circus and the only American member of the cast. Here he works his cutout stop-motion magic on an assortment of Christmas cards....

Posted by Michael Bates on December 22, 2011 6:57 PM