This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Jesse Rothstein (UC-Berkeley) & Albert Yoon (Toronto), Rankings Without U.S. News: A Revealed Preference Approach to Evaluating Law Schools
2. Neil Hamilton (St. Thomas-MN), Professional Identity Formation And The NextGen Bar Open Opportunities For Law Student And Law School Success
3. David Hyman (Georgetown), Jing Liu (East China University) & Joshua Teitelbaum (Georgetown), Does the 1L Curriculum Make a Difference?
4. Meredith Geller (Northern Illinois), Using a Status Email Assignment In First-Year Legal Writing To Address Issues With Student Correspondence
5. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Legal Ed News Roundup
6. Jewish Journal Op-Ed (Jim Gash, President & CEO of Pepperdine University), Jewish Students And Faculty At Christian Universities And Law Schools
7. Scott Fruehwald, The Best Legal Education Scholarship Of 2024
8. Andrew Perlman (Dean, Suffolk), Generative AI And The Future Of Legal Scholarship
9. Josh Blackman (South Texas), What Is The Future Of The Federalist Society?
10. ABA Journal, The Top Ten Legal Education Stories Of 2024

Tax:

1. Law360, First Bitcoin Investor To Get Prison Time For Crypto-Related Tax Evasion
2. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), A Year Of Lessons From The Tax Court (2024)
3. Florida Tax Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Fall 2023)
4. Hans Gribnau (Tilburg), Equality In Tax Law: The Tension Between Democracy And The Rule Of Law
5. Darien Shanske (UC-Davis) & Peter Enrich (Northeastern) et al, A Flawed Critique Of Progressive State Tax Policy
6. Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan) & Doron Narotzki (Akron), The Tariffs Are Coming! The Tariffs Are Coming!
7. Call For Papers, UCLA Business And Tax Roundtable For Aspiring Law Professors
8. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Tax Policy In The Biden Administration
9. Tax Notes, 2024 Persons Of The Year
10. Law360, The Top Ten Tax Decisions And Policies Of 2024

Faith

1. New York Times Op-Ed (David Brooks), My Decade-Long Journey To Faith
2. New York Times Op-Ed (Nicholas Kristof), A Conversation About The Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t
3. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine, Fire, And God
4. Jewish Journal Op-Ed (Jim Gash, President & CEO of Pepperdine University), Jewish Students And Faculty At Christian Universities And Law Schools
5. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), More On Pepperdine, Fire, And God
6. New York Times Op-Ed (Peter Wehner), Why It Matters That Jesus Came From A Dysfunctional Family
7. New York Times (Elizabeth Dias), December 23 Is ‘Christmas Adam’
8. The Free Press (Douglas Murray), Winston Churchill’s Christmas Eve Message To America
9. Christianity Today Op-Ed (Philip Yancey), Christmas Was Always God’s Plan
10. Christianity Today, Wicked, Luigi Mangione, And Evil

Rapoport: Training Law Students To Model Civility In An Uncivil Social Media World

Nancy B. Rapoport (UNLV; Google Scholar), Training Law Students to Model Civility When Social Media Makes Civility Harder to Maintain, 85 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 511 (2024): 

This paper, presented as part of a symposium honoring the Hon. Joseph F. Weis Jr., discusses two relatively recent law student behavioral failures, triggered in part by the effect of the anonymity of social media posts on social discourse.  It suggests better ways of dealing with public disagreements.

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Stepping Up Basis In Living Taxpayer Assets With Upstream Wealth Transfers Through Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts

Michael J. Schaum (J.D. 2024, St. Thomas-FL), Comment, Stepping up Basis in Living Taxpayer Assets with Upstream Wealth Transfers through Intentionally Defective Grantor Trusts, 36 St. Thomas L. Rev. 80 (2023): 

This paper will begin with a brief background discussion on the tax and estate planning principles underlying the legality of the wealth transfer including (A) the Taxable Gross Estate; (B) the Unified Tax Credit against the Estate and Gift Tax; (C) Basis and Adjustments; (D) Defective Grantor Trusts; and (E) Downstream Sale Combined with a Grantor Trust. The paper will then discuss the absence of guidance from the IRS on the legality of these trust structures and finally conclude that the IRS should allow wealth preservation through the transactions described herein because the current Code, properly construed, allows for it.

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Nguyen & Maine: Tax Treatment Of Crypto Losses

Xuan-Thao Nguyen (University of Washington) & Jeffrey A. Maine (Maine), Crypto Losses, 2024 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1119 (reviewed by Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo; Google Scholar) here):

The crypto industry has been hit hard with various market forces and scams, leaving investors with trillion-dollar losses in recent years. The appropriate tax treatment of such losses has yet to be fully examined, as there is scant guidance and a dearth of academic literature on the subject. This Article attempts to fill this gap by applying general tax principles to crypto losses and making several recommendations to improve the clarity and consistency of tax results.

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Please Join Us: Pepperdine Caruso Law AALS Reception (Friday, Jan. 10)

Pepperdine Caruso Law School invites law professors and deans to a reception
hosted by Dean Paul Caron at the 2025 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Friday, Jan. 10, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Feinstein's Theater/Kanpai Lounge (Lobby Level) | Hotel Nikko
Please join us for wine & beer and hors d'oeuvres

Weekly Legal Education Roundup And The Best Legal Education Scholarship Of 2024

Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Journal, The Five Biggest Changes to the Bar Exam in 2024
• ABA Journal, The Top Ten Legal Education Stories of 2024
• Josh Blackman (South Texas), What Is The Future Of The Federalist Society?
• Meredith Geller (Northern Illinois), ‘Yo, Prof!’ is Not the Proper Way to Address Me: Using a Status Email Assignment in First-Year Legal Writing to Address Issues with Student Correspondence
• David Hyman (Georgetown), Jing Liu (East China University) & Joshua Teitelbaum (Georgetown), Does the 1L Curriculum Make a Difference?
• Jewish Journal Op-Ed:  Where Faith Meets Understanding, by Jim Gash (President & CEO, Pepperdine University)
• Carolyn Young Larmore (Chapman) & Abigail Patthoff (Chapman), Flour, Fondant & Feedback: What the Great British Bake Off Can Teach Us About Critiquing Student Legal Writing
• Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy, Call For Papers: UCLA Business And Tax Roundtable For Aspiring Law Professors
• Andrew Perlman (Dean, Suffolk; Google Scholar), Generative AI and the Future of Legal Scholarship
• Jesse Rothstein (UC-Berkeley) & Albert Yoon (Toronto), Rankings Without U.S. News: A Revealed Preference Approach to Evaluating Law Schools
• Roundup, Legal Ed News

Best Legal Education Articles of 2024

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Shifting Tax Law, IRS Priorities Bode Chaos Heading Into 2025
• Bloomberg, Three International Tax Cases Practitioners Must Watch in 2025
• Bloomberg, Three State and Local Tax Cases Practitioners Must Watch in 2025
• Law360, European Tax Policy To Watch In 2025
• Law360, International Tax Cases To Watch In 2025
• Law360, International Tax Issues to Watch In 2025
• Law360, Federal Tax Cases To Watch In 2025
• Law360, Federal Tax Policy To Watch In 2025
• Law360, State And Local Tax Cases To Watch In 2025
• Law360, State And Local Tax Policy To Watch In 2025

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Equality In Tax Law: The Tension Between Democracy And The Rule Of Law

Hans Gribnau (Tilburg), Equality in Tax Law: The Tension Between Democracy and the Rule Of Law:

Taxes make a decent existence in human society possible. But at the same time, they are an infringement upon a person's freedom. These two diverging interests - the undisturbed enjoyment of one's freedom and the levying of taxes in the interest of all citizens - are accommodated by the principle of the rule of law: government is to exercise power according to the law and to govern via laws. Therefore, taxes should be levied by pre-established laws. The rule of law aims at protection against arbitrary interferences. Laws are supposed to promote certainty and equality.

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Blackman: What Is The Future Of The Federalist Society?

Josh Blackman (South Texas; Google Scholar), What is the Future of the Federalist Society?:

Over the past four decades, the Federalist Society (FedSoc) has climbed from an obscure organization to the apex of influence. What started as a group of students criticizing the liberal legal order has now become the embodiment of the prevailing conservative jurisprudence. The recent National Lawyers Convention provided an opportunity to toast the FedSoc's successes, and there is much to celebrate. But this moment also presents something of an inflection point. For nearly half a century, FedSoc has followed the same playbook under the same leadership: a debating society that does not take any position on legal issues. But Eugene Meyer, the society's stalwart and venerated President, [steps down today and Sheldon Gilbert becomes its second President] ... [T]he conservative legal movement should take stock of what the future portends for FedSoc. . . .

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Does The 1L Curriculum Make A Difference?

David A. Hyman (Georgetown), Jing Liu (East China University) &  Joshua C. Teitelbaum (Georgetown; Google Scholar), Does the 1L Curriculum Make a Difference?, 21 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 375 (2024): 

Georgetown Law’s Curriculum B (also known as Section 3) offers a unique opportunity to study an alternative 1L curriculum. The standard 1L curriculum has been around for decades and is still offered at the vast majority of U.S. law schools. Leaders in the legal academy often talk about experimenting with the 1L curriculum, but hardly anyone does it. Georgetown Law has. We study whether Georgetown’s Curriculum B yields measurable differences in student outcomes. Our empirical design leverages the fact that enrollment in Curriculum B is done by lottery when it is oversubscribed—meaning our study is effectively a randomized controlled trial. 

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A Flawed Critique Of Progressive State Tax Policy

Darien Shanske (UC-Davis; Google Scholar), Michael Mazerov (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities), Dan Bucks (Multistate Tax Commission), Peter Enrich (Northeastern) & Carl Davis (Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy), Incidence Is Not Incidental: A First Response to COST's Flawed Critique of the Pursuit of Progressive State Tax Policy, 114 Tax Notes St. 173 (Oct. 21, 2024):

SALT in the Public Interest presents government and academic perspectives on state and local tax issues in a roundtable discussion format featuring former Multistate Tax Commission Executive Director Dan R. Bucks; Peter D. Enrich, professor emeritus at the Northeastern University School of Law; Michael Mazerov, who recently retired from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and professor Darien Shanske of the University of California, Davis, School of Law (King Hall). This column also features guest commentator Carl Davis, research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Tax Notes State senior editor Doug Sheppard moderates the discussion.

In this installment, the authors respond to a recent article by Karl Frieden of the Council On State Taxation [Wearing Blinders in the Debate Over Business’s ‘Fair Share’ of State Taxes, 112 State Tax Notes 91 (Apr. 8, 2024)], arguing that it attributes a position to them that they’ve never taken and is fundamentally flawed because it evaluates tax fairness without considering incidence.

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Call For Papers: UCLA Business And Tax Roundtable For Aspiring Law Professors

Call for Papers:

The Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law is pleased to announce its first annual Business and Tax Roundtable for Upcoming Professors (“BATRUP”). This in-person Roundtable will take place at UCLA from Friday evening June 13th through Sunday June 15th.  The program will feature commentary by invited senior scholars as well as an opportunity to meet fellow aspiring scholars while enjoying Los Angeles.  We warmly invite scholars preparing for the academic job market to participate.

Roundtable Purpose and Eligibility

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The Top Ten ABA Journal Legal Education Stories Of 2024

1. 4 of 5 Modern Lawyer Presidents Graduated From T-14 Law Schools; Harris Wouldn't be in That Group If Elected
2. Clinical Law Prof Who Worked for Social Justice Killed in Triple Murder
3. Is SCOTUS Making it Harder to Teach Constitutional Law? Profs 'Depleted' and Taken Aback by 'Velocity' of Change
4. Meet Peter Park, Possibly Youngest Person to Pass California Bar
5. New Bar Passage Stats Show Several Law Schools Below ABA Cutoff
6. Shake-Up in US News' 2024 Law School Rankings
7. Tests Into and Out of Law Schools—What’s Changing and Why

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The Five Biggest Changes To The Bar Exam In 2024

ABA Journal, 5 Biggest Changes to the Bar Exam in 2024:

This year was a key moment for the bar exam, with changes to the exam and paths to licensure taking place around the country. Here are the top five that caught our attention.

1. ABA Legal Ed Council Gives Its Blessing to Alternative Licensing
2. Oregon's Alternative Pathway to the Bar Proves Popular
3. California Supreme Court Approves State's Kaplan-Created Bar Exam

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The Top Ten Tax Decisions And Policies Of 2024

• Law360, Top Federal Tax Decisions Of 2024
• Law360, Top Federal Tax Policies Of 2024
• Law360, Top State And Local Tax Decisions Of 2024
• Law360, Top State And Local Tax Policies Of 2024

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SSRN Tax Professor Rankings

SSRN has updated its monthly ranking of 750 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN database.  Here is the new list (through December 1, 2024) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):

		All-Time			Recent
1	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	239,661	1	Jonathan Choi (USC)	16,013
2	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	137,084	2	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	12,555
3	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	130,870	3	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	10,374
4	Dan Shaviro (NYU)	130,127	4	Zachary Liscow (Yale)	6,616
5	Lily Batchelder (NYU)	129,268	5	Daniel Hemel (NYU)	4,794
6	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	122,804	6	Kristin Hickman (Minnesota)	4,584
7	David Kamin (NYU)	115,971	7	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	4,502
8	Cliff Fleming (BYU)	109,674	8	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	4,341
9	Ari Glogower (Northwestern)	106,049	9	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	3,790
10	Manoj Viswanathan (UC-SF)	105,566	10	Darien Shanske (UC-Davis)	3,711
11	Rebecca Kysar (Fordham)	105,240	11	David Gamage (Missouri-Columbia)	3,698
12	D. Dharmapala (UC-Berkeley)	56,054	12	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	3,577
13	Michael Simkovic (USC)	51,499	13	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	3,401
14	Louis Kaplow (Harvard)	45,500	14	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	3,183
15	Jonathan Choi (USC)	44,612	15	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	3,107
16	Bridget Crawford (Pace)	42,765	16	David Weisbach (Chicago)	2,937
17	Paul Caron (Pepperdine)	42,764	17	Kyle Rozema (Northwestern)	2,785
18	Richard Ainsworth (Boston University)	41,021	18	Michael Simkovic (USC)	2,674
19	Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)	36,798	19	Brian Galle (Georgetown)	2,457
20	Amy Monahan (Minnesota)	36,019	20	Ellen Aprill (Loyola-L.A.)	2,265
21	Brad Borden (Brooklyn)	35,649	21	Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo)	2,237
22	Ruth Mason (Virginia)	34,227	22	Andy Grewal (Iowa)	2,116
23	Kim Clausing (UCLA)	32,719	23	Edward McCaffery (USC)	2,063
24	Vic Fleischer (UC-Irvine)	31,666	24	Richard Ainsworth (Boston University)	2,003
25	Ed Kleinbard (USC)	30,744	25	Yariv Brauner (Florida)	1,978

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Rankings Without U.S. News: A Revealed Preference Approach To Evaluating Law Schools

Jesse Rothstein (UC-Berkeley; Google Scholar) & Albert Yoon (Toronto; Google Scholar), Rankings without U.S. News: A Revealed Preference Approach to Evaluating Law Schools, 21 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 279 (2024): 

Since their inception in 1989, the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings have influenced how schools, students, and the legal profession itself think about legal education. In the Fall of 2022, however, several of the most selective law schools formally withdrew from the annual rankings. In so doing, these schools laid bare longstanding criticisms of the rankings’ questionable criteria and opaque methodology. While the long-term effect of this boycott remains to be seen, school rankings are likely here to stay. In this Article we design a more informative approach to rankings, based on actual decisions students make. 

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The Great British Bake Off And Critiquing Student Legal Writing

Carolyn Young Larmore (Chapman; Google Scholar) & Abigail Patthoff (Chapman), Flour, Fondant & Feedback: What the Great British Bake Off Can Teach Us About Critiquing Student Legal Writing: 

We've all been there: a stack of legal memos towering, grading deadlines approaching, and suddenly that British baking show on Netflix seems irresistible. But what if your "Great British Bake Off" binge could actually make you a better legal writing professor? As it turns out, this delightful distraction serves up more than just a sweet escape from grading—it offers a surprisingly apt model for critiquing student work.

What is the Great British Bake Off?
The Great British Bake Off, or GBBO as it's affectionately known, has become a global phenomenon, capturing hearts even across the pond in America. While it hardly needs an introduction, we’ll briefly set the scene. Each season, twelve amateur bakers from across Great Britain compete in a giant kitchen tent on the lawn of a picturesque manor home. Weekly themed challenges, such as "French Patisserie Week" or "Bread Week," test the bakers' skills in timed trials. Two witty hosts provide commentary and narration, while judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith offer critiques and determine the bakers' fates. Each week, one baker is eliminated and another is crowned "Star Baker." There's no cash prize at stake; the ultimate winner receives only a commemorative cake plate and bragging rights—yet the show's popularity endures.

So what does this baking show have to do with legal writing? GBBO serves up a masterclass in project feedback—a crucial aspect of our roles as legal writing instructors.

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Juries And Tax: The Effect Of Income Taxation On Tort Damages

Jeffrey H. Kahn (Florida State) & John E. Lopatka (Penn State), Juries and Tax: The Effect of Income Taxation on Tort Damages, 76 S.C. L. Rev. 49 (2024):

In some shape or form, most tort damages for personal injuries have been excluded from federal income taxation since 1919. Despite this rule having celebrated its 100th birthday, the tax policy justification for the exclusion eludes consensus. Whether the policy is justified or not, the exclusion raises two other issues: should compensatory damage awards reflect non-taxability, and should juries be informed about tax treatment when determining awards? Like the disagreement over policy justifications for the exclusion, states are not in accord on their damage rule or approach to jury instructions.

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A Year Of Lessons From The Tax Court (2024)

Here is a chronological listing of all the Lessons From The Tax Court I posted in 2024, with links to the Lesson, the primary case discussed, and its author.  I have also listed the primary Code sections mentioned or discussed in the Lesson.  At the end of the chronological listing, you will find a table listing the posts by which Tax Court Judge authored the Court's opinion.

January 22: Changes

February 5: For Whom The SOL Tolls, Madiodio Sall v. Commissioner, 161 T.C. 13 (Nov. 30, 2023) (Judge Buch) — §7503, §7451, §6213(a), §7502, Rule 26(b)(1)(A), 135 Stat. 149, 1336 

March 4: Choose Your Return Preparer Carefully, Stephanie Murrin v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2024-10 (Jan. 26, 2024) (Judge Urda) — §6662, 31 U.S.C. §330, §6501, §6663, §250

April 1: Taxpayer Excused From Providing Sewage-Soaked Receipts, H. DeForest Boegart v. Commissioner, T.C. Summ. Op. 2024-4 (Mar. 4, 2024) (Judge Panuthos) — §162

April 1: The Interplay Of SSDI Benefits And The §104(a)(1) Exclusion, Donald Ecret and Kristen Ecret v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2024-23 (Feb. 14) (Judge Lauber) — §104(a)(1), §86(d), 42 U.S.C. 424a

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Legal Ed News Roundup

• 
  Al Brophy (Alabama), George L. Priest (1947-2024)
• The Champion, Largest Gift in Emory Law School’s History Funds Business and Transitional Law Center
• Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, UC-Berkeley), We Should All Be Very Worried About the Fate of Our Democracy (Sacramento Bee Op-Ed)
• Rachel Cohen (Skadden),  I’m a White HLS Grad. Classroom Diversity Made Me a Better Lawyer. (Harvard Crimson Op-Ed)
• Susan Krinsky (Interim President & CEO, LSAC), First Impressions of the Incoming Class of 2024: Largest Class Since 2021, Top-Line Diversity Is Level, More Research Needed and the Work Continues
• Law360, Florida State Law School Explores Role Of AI In The Legal Profession
• Brian Leiter (Chicago), In Memoriam: George L. Priest (1947-2024)

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Perlman: Generative AI And The Future Of Legal Scholarship

Andrew M. Perlman (Dean, Suffolk; Google Scholar), Generative AI and the Future of Legal Scholarship:

Since ChatGPT's release in November 2022, legal scholars have grappled with generative AI's implications for the law, lawyers, and legal education. Articles have examined the technology's potential to transform the delivery of legal services, explored the attendant legal ethics concerns, identified legal and regulatory issues arising from generative AI’s widespread use, and discussed the impact of the technology on teaching and learning in law school.

By late 2024, generative AI has become so sophisticated that legal scholars now need to consider a new set of issues that relate to a core feature of the law professor's work: the production of legal scholarship itself.

To demonstrate the growing ability of generative AI to yield new insights and draft sophisticated scholarly text, the rest of this piece contains a new theory of legal scholarship drafted exclusively by ChatGPT. In other words, the article simultaneously articulates the way in which legal scholarship will change due to AI and uses the technology itself to demonstrate the point.

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Frequently Unanswered Questions: Scrutinizing The IRS's Informal Guidance

Marilyn Hajj (Virginia), Frequently Unanswered Questions: Scrutinizing the IRS's Informal Guidance:

Every year, a majority of Americans file taxes—but their tax returns often contain errors. The Internal Revenue Service provides informal tax guidance, including FAQs posted on their website, to assist taxpayers in fulfilling their obligations. These FAQs are meant to present tax information in a more readable way and offer supposedly clear information to help address taxpayers' questions. But do they actually achieve this goal? This study, the first of its kind, presents a pioneering analysis of the readability of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) posted on the IRS’s website, focusing on information most useful to lower-income taxpayers. In doing so, it makes significant interdisciplinary contributions to both the tax and poverty law literatures.

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TaxProf Blog Weekend Roundup

Saturday:

• This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts
• Using a Status Email Assignment In First-Year Legal Writing To Address Issues With Student Correspondence
• First Bitcoin Investor To Get Prison Time For Crypto-Related Tax Evasion

Sunday:

• Christmas Was Always God’s Plan
• Why ‘A Christmas Carol’ Endures
• Repeat The Sounding Joy—Until It Becomes Habit
• Jewish Students And Faculty At Christian Universities and Law Schools
• The Top Five New Tax Papers

Christmas Was Always God’s Plan

Christianity Today Op-Ed:  Christmas Was Always God’s Plan, by Philip Yancey (Author: Where the Light Fell: A Memoir (2023)):

More than two centuries before the Reformation, a theological debate broke out pitting the premier theologian Thomas Aquinas against an upstart Scottish Franciscan priest, John Duns Scotus. The heart of the debate circled around the question “Would the event we celebrate at Christmas have occurred if humanity had not disobeyed God?”

Like most theologians, Aquinas viewed the Incarnation as God’s remedy for a fallen planet, a rescue plan that God first prophesied in Genesis 3. Aquinas pointed to Scripture passages that highlight the Cross as God’s redemptive response to a broken relationship with humanity.

Duns Scotus, nicknamed “the Scotsman,” saw much more at stake. To him, the Word becoming flesh, as described in the prologue to John’s gospel, must surely represent the Creator’s primary design—God’s original goal—and not a plan B. Duns Scotus cited passages from Ephesians and Colossians on the cosmic Christ in whom all things have their origin, hold together, and move toward consummation.

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NY Times Op-Ed: Why ‘A Christmas Carol’ Endures

New York Times Op-Ed:  Why ‘A Christmas Carol’ Endures, by Roger Rosenblatt:

Since its publication in December 1843, “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens has been a cherished presence during the holiday season. The novella — which Dickens wrote to make money when he was broke — has not gone out of print once in more than 180 years and has been adapted into dozens of movies, stage productions, musicals and mini series, attracting stars from Alastair Sim to the Muppets. Today one can hardly think of Christmas without thinking of Scrooge, the Cratchits and Tiny Tim’s “God bless us, every one.”

In some ways, the story’s enduring appeal is easy to account for. “A Christmas Carol” is, first and foremost, a ghost story — a genre that never seems to go out of fashion. But what’s less easy to account for, and more interesting, is how this 19th-century tale has continued to speak to modern readers, offering moral lessons that have only grown more relevant over the decades.

Why does such a figure appeal to us today? Why, despite his depravity, do we still root for his redemption? Guilt, I think. Scrooge speaks to us because in many ways, he is us. ...

Entire religions are based on what Scrooge experiences and on what he vows.

There is no doubt that we have become an increasingly self-concerned society. But there is something counterfeit and insincere at the center of our self-involvement. Like Scrooge, we may behave worse, but we know better. We do not ask ourselves what more we can do for others, and we suffer for our selfishness because it is when we live our lives for others that we are most satisfied.

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Repeat The Sounding Joy—Until It Becomes Habit

Christianity Today Op-Ed:  Repeat the Sounding Joy—Until it Becomes Habit, by Shena Ashcraft (Dallas Theological Seminary): 

If Bible-reading habits are any indication, many Christians are struggling with anxiety this year. Top Scripture search engines showed that one of the most popular passages of 2024 was Philippians 4, and especially verse 6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Yet just two verses earlier, Paul issues another command—one so important he felt it worth repeating: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (v. 4).

It seems joy, not just the absence of anxiety, is essential to experiencing God’s peace amid life’s challenges. Both Scripture and science prove the power of rejoicing, even, and perhaps especially, when we don’t feel like it. Thankfully, the highs and lows of the holiday season provide us with ample opportunity to do just that. 

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Jewish Students And Faculty At Christian Universities And Law Schools

Jewish Journal Op-Ed:  Where Faith Meets Understanding, by Jim Gash (President & CEO, Pepperdine University):

Jewish students are feeling unwelcome and unsafe—for good reason—on many American college campuses. This is a great tragedy. It is a tragedy for the students, who should, without question or reservation, be able to expect their campuses to be places where they can study and live without threat of physical harm or intimidation. It is nothing short of a tragedy that the administrators at many universities betrayed their own values and alienated some of their best and brightest students from their communities. It is an even greater tragedy for American society, as we see antisemitism growing to an unimaginable level in this modern age.

Pepperdine is different. We are a place where antisemitism is given no quarter. We are a place that is honored by the presence of our Jewish students and faculty—where every year, we have a Sukkah constructed on campus so our observant students can have a place to eat and fellowship on Sukkot; where a Menorah is lit to celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah; and where Jewish students gather together over lunch to discuss the weekly Torah portion. We are a place where the Judeo-Christian values that form the bedrock of our free society are celebrated rather than denigrated. And we are a place of education, not a place of propaganda.

All universities educate from one perspective or another, whether they are honest about it or not. At Pepperdine, we are honest and unashamed of the fact that we are a Christian university—that is, we approach the work of education from a Christian perspective. We believe, as the Proverbs teach, that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And it is actually because of our Christian perspective that we so greatly value the presence of our Jewish students on campus.

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The Top Five New Tax Papers

This week's list of the Top 5 Recent Tax Paper Downloads is the same as last week's list.

1. [422 Downloads]  Rotten to the Core: The EU's Court of Justice Decision in Apple, by Ruth Mason (Virginia; Google Scholar) & Stephen Daly (King's College London; Google Scholar)
2. [315 Downloads]  ETFs and the Wash Sale Loophole, by Michael Dambra (SUNY-Buffalo), Andrew Glover (University of Washington), Charles M.C. Lee (Stanford) & Phillip Quinn (University of Washington)
3. [307 Downloads]  False Idols In The Early History Of International Taxation, by Wei Cui (British Columbia; Google Scholar)
4. [254 Downloads]  The Quiet Evolution In International Tax: Domestic Law And Double Taxation, by Craig Elliffe (University of Auckland; Google Scholar)
5. [223 Downloads]  The Consequences Of Limiting The Tax Deductibility Of R&D, by Mary Cowx (Arizona State; Google Scholar), Rebecca Lester (Stanford; Google Scholar) & Michelle L. Nessa (Michigan State; Google Scholar)

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This Week's Ten Most Popular TaxProf Blog Posts

Legal Education: 

1. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), July 2024 California Bar Exam Results
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), July 2024 California Bar Exam Results For Out-Of-State Law Schools
3. Nathan Fleming (Wake Forest), After Affirmative Action: Contextual Admissions and the Future of African American Law School Enrollment
4. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), More On Pepperdine, Fire, And God
5. Houston Law Review Symposium, Tributes To Michael Olivas
6. ABA, Data On Law School Admissions: 1L JD Enrollment Rose +4.8%, Non-JD Enrollment Rose +2.4%
7. Katya Cronin (George Washington), Value-Centered Lawyering: Reshaping The Law School Curriculum To Promote Well-Being, Quality Client Representation, And A Thriving Legal Field
8. Reuters, Fewer Black And Hispanic Law Students At Elite Schools Portends ‘Cascade Effect’
9. Aaron Renn (American Reformer), Robert George: The Future Of Conservatives In Academia
10. Denver Law Review Symposium, The Rocky Mountain Collective On Race, Place, And Law

Tax:

1. Bryan Camp (Texas Tech), Lesson From The Tax Court: Taxpayers Behaving Badly 2024
2. ProPublica, How A Loophole Lets Billionaires Avoid Medicare Taxes
3. Alex Raskolnikov (Columbia), Presentation Of A New View Of Formal Equality At The Italian Society Of Law And Economics
4. Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama), Review Of A Roadmap To NIL And Taxation By Doron Narotzki (Akron) & Yariv Brauner (Florida)
5. David Elkins (Netanya), Review Of The Constitutional Limits To The Taxing Power By Ari Glogower (Northwestern)
6. Steven Sheffrin (Tulane), Realization Makes An Intellectual Comeback
7. University of Connecticut, Goldburn Maynard Leaves Indiana-Kelley For Connecticut
8. Calvin Johnson (Texas), The Misfocused Excise Tax On Stock Buybacks
9. Tyler Cowen (George Mason), Marriage Markets And Tax Arbitrage
10. Clinton Wallace (South Carolina) & Shelley Welton (Penn), Luxury, Pigouvian, Sin, Oh My: A Politically Agreeable Carbon Tax

Faith

1. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), Pepperdine, Fire, And God
2. Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), More On Pepperdine, Fire, And God
3. New York Times Op-Ed (Nicholas Kristof), A Conversation About The Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t
4. New York Times Op-Ed (Peter Wehner), Why It Matters That Jesus Came From A Dysfunctional Family
5. New York Times (Elizabeth Dias), December 23 Is ‘Christmas Adam’
6. The Free Press (Douglas Murray), Winston Churchill’s Christmas Eve Message To America
7. Dispatch Faith (John McCormack & Lauren McCormack), How We Named Our Daughter: A Story For Advent And Christmas 
8. New York Times Op-Ed (Ross Douthat), Religion Has Been In Decline. This Christmas Seems Different.
9. Wall Street Journal Editorial, In Hoc Anno Domini (In The Year Of Our Lord)
10. Washington Post Op-Ed (Megan McArdle), A Christmas Puppy And Jesus

Using a Status Email Assignment In First-Year Legal Writing To Address Issues With Student Correspondence

Meredith Geller (Northern Illinois), ‘Yo, Prof!’ is Not the Proper Way to Address Me: Using a Status Email Assignment in First-Year Legal Writing to Address Issues with Student Correspondence: 

This article summarizes the status email assignment used in a first year legal writing class in order to help students with professional writing.  

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First Bitcoin Investor To Get Prison Time For Crypto-Related Tax Evasion

Law360, Bitcoin Investor Gets 2 Years For Tax Fraud In Landmark Case:

An investor who concealed millions of dollars he earned in bitcoin and became the first person criminally charged for failing to report gains from the sale of cryptocurrency by filing false returns was sentenced to two years in federal prison Thursday.

Ars Technica, Don’t Use Crypto to Cheat on Taxes: Bitcoin Bro Gets 2 Years:

Early bitcoin investor first to get prison time for crypto-related tax evasion.

A bitcoin investor who went to increasingly great lengths to hide $1 million in cryptocurrency gains on his tax returns was sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday.

It seems that not even his most "sophisticated" tactics—including using mixers, managing multiple wallets, and setting up in-person meetings to swap bitcoins for cash—kept the feds from tracing crypto trades that he believed were untraceable.

Department of Justice Press Release, Early Bitcoin Investor Sentenced for Filing Tax Returns that Falsely Reported His Cryptocurrency Gains:

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Florida Tax Review Publishes New Issue

The Florida Tax Review has published Vol. 27, No. 1 (Fall 2023): 

• Donald Lamar Ariail (Kennesaw State; Google Scholar), Dennis R. Lassila (Texas A&M; Google Scholar), Anita Reed (Texas A&M), Murphy Smith (Texas A&M; Google Scholar), Ethical Attitudes toward Taxes in the US: Changes Over 20 Years and Demographic Differences, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 1 (2023)
• Karen C. Burke (Florida; Google Scholar), Business-Entity Charitable Workarounds, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 37 (2023) 
• Mark J. Cowan (Boise State; Google Scholar) & Joshua Cutler (Boise State), ESG and the Demand for State Tax Incentives, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 78 (2023) 
• Yehonatan Givati (Hebrew University) & Andrew T. Hayashi (Virginia; Google Scholar), Tax Law Enforcement and Redistributive Policies, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 149 (2023) 
• Michael Hatfield (University of Washington; Google Scholar), Safeguarding Taxpayer Data, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 212 (2023) 
• Henry Ordower (St. Louis; Google Scholar), Unbundling Social Security from the Payroll Tax, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 269 (2023)
• Eric Reis (North Texas), Guaranteed Wealth?: A New Way of Thinking About the Gift Tax Treatment of Loan Guarantees, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 304 (2023) 
• Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.), The Role of Marriage in the Internal Revenue Code, 27 Fla. Tax Rev. 348 (2023) 

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Weekly Legal Education Roundup

• ABA Section Of Legal Education, Annual Report
• Bloomberg, LSAT Alternatives Gain Slowly in Law Admissions, ABA Data Show
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), July 2024 California Bar Exam Results
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), July 2024 California Bar Exam Results For Out-Of-State Law Schools
• Paul Caron (Dean, Pepperdine), More On Pepperdine, Fire, And God

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Critical Curriculum Design To Cultivate Qualities Of ‘Engaged Citizenship’

Rachel López (Temple; Google Scholar), Critical Curriculum Design: 

Legal education in the United States stands at a critical juncture. As democracy faces mounting threats both at home and abroad, law schools must grapple with their role in shaping not just competent lawyers but engaged citizens capable of safeguarding democratic institutions. Yet the traditional model of teaching students to “think like a lawyer” may be inadvertently undermining the very values and norms essential to stabilizing our democracy.

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Tax Policy In The Biden Administration

• Bloomberg, Three Federal Tax Cases That Practitioners Must Watch in 2025
• Law360, Digital Taxes In Flux Amid Renewed US Tariff Threats
• Law360, Top Federal Tax Decisions Of 2024
• Law360, Top State And Local Tax Policies Of 2024
• Jim Maule (Villanova), Analyzing the Federal Income Tax Consequences of a Crappy Barter Proposal 
• National Review, Republicans Should Think Bigger on Tax Cuts
• New York Times, How a Consulting Firm and Trump’s I.R.S. Pick Pushed a Problematic Tax Credit

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Tax Notes 2024 Persons Of The Year

Tax Notes Federal Persons of the Year:

Dorothy Brown, Champion for Change:  Dorothy Brown reflects on her time spent serving as a member of the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity and the committee’s ultimate success in advocating for Treasury to release regulations on sharing more data with the Census Bureau to help conduct critical tax analysis.

Dorothy Brown isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and that’s exactly what she’s done this year to expedite Treasury’s progress on addressing racial inequities in the U.S. tax code.

“Treasury is an agency that’s run amok,” Brown told Tax Notes November 22 in her office at Georgetown University Law Center. “They do what they want, when they want, however they want, and nobody, apparently, has the guts to say, ‘We’re going in a different way.’”

Brown, a renowned academic and author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans — And How We Can Fix It, has been a high-profile advocate of Treasury collecting and sharing statistics on tax and race with the U.S. Census Bureau.

“If you want to talk about tax analysis, you’ve got to have the race and class data. People need to see who’s getting loopholes and who’s getting shut out of loopholes,” said Brown, who serves as the Martin D. Ginsburg Chair in Taxation at Georgetown Law.

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Professional Identity Formation And The NextGen Bar Open Opportunities For Law Student And Law School Success

Neil W. Hamilton (St. Thomas-MN), Professional Identity Formation and the NextGen Bar Open Opportunities for Law Student and Law School Success, 3 J.L. Teaching & Learning __ (2025):

All law faculty, staff, and students want students and graduates to be successful with respect to: (1) academic performance; (2) bar passage; (3) meaningful post-graduation employment; and (4) excellent service to clients and the legal system.  Both the 2022 changes to ABA accreditation Standard 303  and the ongoing implementation of the NextGen Bar starting in five states in 2026 and ten more states in 2027  open substantial opportunities for law students and law schools to achieve more success at these four goals.

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ABA: LSAT Alternatives Gain Slowly In Law School Admissions

Bloomberg, LSAT Alternatives Gain Slowly in Law Admissions, ABA Data Show:

Applicants to US law schools are using alternative exams, but the vast majority of those accepted are taking the longstanding Law School Admissions Test, data recently released by the American Bar Association shows.

Of students who took an exam, 38,728 students were accepted to US law programs with the LSAT, according to data provided by law schools to the ABA and released for the first time Monday. Another 701 applicants were admitted with the Graduate Record Exam, and 23 were admitted using the new JD-Next prep course and entrance exam as an alternative admissions test.

The ABA disclosed this data Monday in its Standard 509 Information report.

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Avi-Yonah & Narotzki: The Tariffs Are Coming! The Tariffs Are Coming!

Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Doron Narotzki (Akron; Google Scholar), The Tariffs Are Coming! The Tariffs Are Coming!, 185 Tax Notes Fed. 1991 (Dec. 9, 2024): 

In this installment of Reflections With Reuven Avi-Yonah, Avi-Yonah and Narotzki explain the use of tariffs and, in light of the new administration’s likelihood of maintaining current tariffs and adding new ones, suggest policies to make the best of the situation, including channeling economic tax benefits to middle- and low-income taxpayers.

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NY Times Op-Ed: A Conversation About The Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t

New York Times Op-Ed:  A Conversation About the Virgin Birth That Maybe Wasn’t, by Nicholas Kristof:

This is the latest in my occasional series of conversations about Christianity, aimed at bridging America’s God gulf. Previously, I’ve spoken with the Rev. Timothy Keller, President Jimmy Carter, the evangelical writer Beth Moore and others. Here I speak with Elaine Pagels, a prominent professor of religion at Princeton University and an expert on the early church. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Merry Christmas! This is a time when Christianity celebrates miracles and wonder — and [Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus (Apr. 1, 2025)] is the title of your fascinating forthcoming book. It raises questions about the virgin birth of Jesus, even pointing to ancient evidence that Jesus might have been fathered by a Roman soldier, possibly by rape. But before I ask you about that, I want to be respectful of readers who have a deep faith and may be upset by this line of inquiry. How do we follow the historical research without causing offense?

I love these stories from the Gospels. The skies opened up when I heard them. They picture human lives drawn into divine mystery: “God in man made manifest,” as one Christmas carol says. But at a certain point I had to ask: What do they mean? What really happened? They are not written simply as history; often they speak in metaphor. We can take them seriously without taking everything literally. ...

You note that Matthew and Luke both borrowed heavily from Mark’s account but also seem embarrassed by elements of it, including the paternity question. Is your guess that they added the virgin birth to reduce that embarrassment?

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NY Times Op-Ed: Why It Matters That Jesus Came From A Dysfunctional Family

New York Times Op-Ed:  Why It Matters That Jesus Came From a Dysfunctional Family, by Peter Wehner (Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center; co-author, City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era):

One of the forgotten facts of the story of Jesus’ life is that he came from a profoundly dysfunctional family.

I was reminded of this while listening to a sermon this month at Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va. Chris Davis, the pastor of the church, took as his text the first 17 verses of the Gospel of Matthew, known as the genealogy of Jesus. Those verses, a long list of names that ties one generation to another, are often skipped over in favor of the story of Jesus’ birth. To the degree that they have any meaning at all, it’s usually because for Christians it establishes Jesus as the heir to the promises God made to Abraham and David.

But as the pastor pointed out, Jesus came down to us through broken families: “one generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation begetting brokenness of another generation.” There were murderers, adulterers, prostitutes and people who committed incest, liars, schemers and idolaters.

Jesus may have been sinless, but those in his lineage were not.

Just as remarkable is that the Gospel of Matthew didn’t hide this troubled family history. According to Michael S. Keller, senior pastor at Redeemer Lincoln Square Church in New York: “These genealogies were an ancient type of résumé. It’s Jesus’ DNA — because your family, your lineage, was your résumé.”

So why was this material there in the first place? Perhaps it’s to show that what could have been a source of shame for Jesus wasn’t — and therefore that it need not be for those of us whose families and histories have shadow sides. ...

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NY Times Op-Ed: Religion Has Been In Decline. This Christmas Seems Different.

New York Times Op-Ed:  Religion Has Been in Decline. This Christmas Seems Different., by Ross Douthat:

Every Christmas I try to write a column on religion, and over the years they’ve often circled themes of challenge, struggle and decline. In an essay this week on the discovery of God, my colleague David Brooks jokes that “entering the church in 2013 was like investing in the stock market in 1929,” and something similar might be said about becoming a Catholic newspaper columnist 15 years ago: Traditional religious institutions have been scandal-racked and fractured throughout my years at this paper — suffering through an early 21st-century ebb tide, if not quite a vast withdrawing roar.

This Christmas seems different. There is statistical evidence that the latest wave of secularization has reached some sort of limit. There is suggestive cultural evidence that secular liberalism has lost faith in itself, that many people miss not just religion’s moral vision but also its metaphysical horizons, that the arguments for religious belief might be getting a new hearing. Notre-Dame de Paris has been rebuilt from its ashes. I rashly predicted a religious revival earlier this year, and at the very least I expect religious trends in the later 2020s to be different from the trends of the 2010s.

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WaPo Op-Ed: A Christmas Puppy And Jesus

Washington Post Op-Ed:  Getting a Puppy Was the Best Worst Christmas Idea Ever, by Megan McArdle:

There is little in this world more charming than the idea of a Christmas puppy. The festive music, the cooing family, that adorable little face with the holiday lights shining from his eyes.

The reality, however, is something of a wreck. ... My husband and I knew all this, all the reasons against it, and then went ahead and got a Christmas puppy anyway. Our miniature bullmastiff was, as expected, adorable: the melting eyes, the oversize paws, the mini-crocodile teeth that he ineptly tried to maul us with. We named him Huckleberry. ...

For all the chaos, there is something intensely right about a Christmas puppy, because Christmas is love, and love is not the picture-perfect moment when everyone is carefully arranged in front of an eminently Instagrammable tree. It’s all the less glamorous things you do to get to the fleeting snapshot. Having a puppy teaches you this very quickly.

Forget the innumerable movies in which a child’s eyes meet a puppy’s — love at first sight — because you don’t really love them when you get them. You are charmed and delighted by them and a little terrified by how tiny and frail they are. But the true love comes later, after long nights standing outside in the frigid dark muttering “Can you please go already?,” and long days chasing them away from this and that, and many anxious moments googling things such as “arugula dog toxic?” ...

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WSJ Editorial: In Hoc Anno Domini

The Wall Street Journal has published this wonderful editorial each Christmas since 1949, In Hoc Anno Domini (In The Year Of Our Lord):

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression — for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

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How We Named Our Daughter: A Story For Advent And Christmas

Dispatch Faith:  How We Named Our Daughter: A Story for Advent and Christmas, by John McCormack & Lauren McCormack:

On the morning of December 24, 2023, we were holding hands while attending Mass at John’s parents’ parish in Madison, Wisconsin. The gospel reading that morning, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, was the Annunciation—when the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive a child by the Holy Spirit:

the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; for nothing will be impossible for God.

For nothing will be impossible for God. At that moment, we squeezed each other’s hand, the way we’d squeezed each other’s hand many times before whenever the stories of Sarah and Abraham or Elizabeth and Zechariah—couples miraculously blessed with a child after many years of infertility—were read aloud in church.

The squeeze was meant to silently convey a sense of hope that God might still bless us with a miracle after a decade of infertility.

By that point, of course, we had little rational basis to think that wish would come true. Married in the spring of 2013, we’d always hoped for a large family, but God seemed to have other plans in mind. 

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Winston Churchill’s Christmas Eve Message To America

Douglas Murray (The Free Press), Things Worth Remembering: Winston Churchill’s Christmas Message to America:

As we near Christmas, I am reminded of the wonderful, 393-word speech delivered by the inimitable Winston Churchill on Christmas Eve of 1941. He spoke from the South Portico of the White House, in the midst of war. ...

[T]he reason that these two nations now found themselves at war, the reason he was there, in the White House, on this “strange Christmas Eve,” was that this war was not like any other that had ever been fought. It had been started by monsters fueled by maniacal visions of worldwide domination, and it would be ended—if Churchill had his way—by him and the man in the wheelchair next to him. ...

It was critical that everyone, especially Roosevelt, understood this: Their war was not, as Churchill put it, about “greed” or “vulgar ambition.” It was about protecting the love, the beauty, of Christmas from those who would do away with it, strip it of its meaning, its charity, its enduring value.

“Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart,” Churchill went on.

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Christmas And Hanukkah: Distinct Holidays With A Common Challenge

Dispatch Faith:  Christmas and Hanukkah: Distinct Holidays With a Common Challenge, by Michael Reneau (The Dispatch) & Ephraim Radner (Wycliffe College, University of Toronto):

Michael Reneau: This year is unusual in that for only the fifth time in the last 100-plus years, the first night of Hanukkah falls on December 25. Christian theology professor Ephraim Radner thinks that’s a natural time to examine what makes each holiday distinct in order to resist both ill-fitting attempts to draw parallels between the two and a common enemy they share: over-commercialization. ...

Ephraim Radner:  I’m a fairly straightforward traditional Christian. An ordained Anglican priest, congregational pastor and theology teacher, I have followed my church’s religious customs pretty consistently and relatively strictly. But I also have a partly Jewish background, and have always been interested in Judaism’s religious commitments. Of late I’ve even become involved with a range of Jewish-Christian and Messianic Jewish disciples of Jesus. Take all of this together and the seasonal conjunction of Christmas and Hanukkah carries a certain challenge—coincidence or providence—especially as the first night of Hanukkah this year begins on Christmas Day. That conjunction appeals to more than a few religious folk, who would like somehow to bring these two festivals together if only for the sake of softening the distance between Christianity and Judaism.

Yet I have come to the conclusion that the two holidays have little to do with one another, and trying to make them somehow complementary probably does a disservice to their intrinsic meanings and thus to the commitments each community holds in their celebration. Simply presenting some background to each helps bring out these profound distinctions, and at the least permits a better perspective for relating one to the other. The effort to make them complementary has also encouraged one of the main problems besetting each holiday: over-commercialization. Keeping both holidays distinct can help ward off what today constitutes their chief enemy.

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