The holiday season can be an especially trying time for our service men, women, and families. Military service and deployment create empty seats at holiday tables, religious services, and celebrations.
The concerted effort to minimize Christmas has resulted in it being our national Happy Holiday holiday. The Christmas season is now the holiday season. Christmas parties are now holiday parties. Christmas is a time for giving and receiving presents and in many homes, nothing more. Who is this fellow, Jesus Christ, anyway?
I signed up for military service in the months following 9/11, and later, as a military intelligence officer, I felt called, like so many others, to volunteer for deployment and service in Afghanistan.
Halloween is the beginning of the holiday shopping season. That's for women. The beginning of the holiday shopping season for men is Christmas Eve.
I am mightily relieved that my holiday does not come after a long queue with the National Holiday Service, complete with bedroom-sharing like the NHS.
Christmas: It's the only religious holiday that's also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services, and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on the true meaning of the separation of church and state.
Fans talk to me about how 'Country Christmas' has become a holiday tradition for them and that they all watch to start their holiday season. To be a part of people's holiday traditions is a real joy.
Merry Christmas to all. A Pagan holiday (BC) becomes a Religious holiday (AD). Which then becomes a Shopping holiday (USA).
In some countries Women's Day is a national holiday and men give women flowers. In America Women's Day falls on another holiday, Mardi Gras, where men give women beads in the respectful and post-feminist desire to see their naked boobies.
The challenges military families face from frequent relocations and deployments are themselves patches of service, and that's why supporting our military families is one of my top priorities in Congress.
Freedom has only the meaning with which men endow it. It is not enough to pay lip service to the concept of religious liberty. We must pay heart service to it as well, else it remains an empty phrase instead of a living reality.
We must never forget or overlook the incredible sacrifice of military families, especially military spouses. These families uproot their lives in service to our nation and help preserve the freedoms we know and love.
I am so grateful for the service our veterans have given to our country. These men and women put their lives on the line for our safety and security, and we need to honor their service and our commitment to them.
Female service members are so integrated into the military, so critical and vital to all functions of the military, from combat service support to combat support, to direct combat, that we could not go to war as a nation - we could not defend America - without our women.
This year's [2016] White House holiday theme is "The Gift of the Holidays," and our decorations reflect some of our greatest gifts as a nation: from our incredible military families, to the life-changing impact of a great education.
'A Christmas Story' has become such a special part of the holiday season for so many families.
When our veterans walk into any VA facility, they converse with men and women who speak the unique language of military service.