A 11-part television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s great novel aired weekly on PBS in 1981.

The messages of “Mary” that can be applied to our own age are received early, and often.

On Christmas Eve 1818, in the church of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf near Salzburg, “Stille Nacht” (“Silent Night”) was sung for the first time. Today, the carol has been translated into some 300 languages.

“Tragic characters like these, who seem tangled in sin, are always a call to conversion,” said one Polish primate.

Jane Leavy chronicles Babe Ruth’s life and times, with a heavy emphasis not only on the culture Ruth played in, but the ways he radically altered that culture, with the help of his visionary agent Christy Walsh.

The simultaneous pull of love and sadness is pure Cheever and permeates his Christmas story.