2018
December
24
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

December 24, 2018
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

For this Christmas Eve edition, we offer you a special audio presentation.

Here’s how to listen:

If you’re reading the Daily in our email format, you’ll need to click through to the full web-based version. Do that by clicking on the headphones icon at the top, or click on any story in the email – and then scroll to the audio controls at the bottom. If you’re already on the web version, then you’re all set! 

Here’s the bonus you’ll find there today: Four of our editors read excerpts from their favorite holiday stories.

Please enjoy this offering. And Merry Christmas. 

Now, to our five featured stories for today.


You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.

Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Beit HaGefen Arab-Jewish Culture Center
Revelers throng the streets under billowing lights at the Holiday of Holidays festival, a yearly event that celebrates cultural and religious diversity in Haifa, Israel. This December marks the festival’s 25th anniversary.
Ugur Can/DHA/AP
Representatives of some 150 Syrian tribes hold a conference in the village of Sajo, near the town of Azaz, Syria, Dec. 21, calling for the overthrow of the Syrian regime and for foreign militias to leave the country. Rebels say the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, following President Trump's surprise announcement, could result in an unstable vacuum in some areas.

Briefing

Walt Johnston
The 25th annual La Posada Sin Fronteras took place Dec. 15 at Border Field State Park in San Diego. Musicians for La Posada Sin Fronteras process along the trail from the park entrance to the border fence.

The Monitor's View

Eloisa Lopez/Reuters
A girl raises her arms as she enjoys Christmas lights and sounds at a show in Makati City, part of metro Manila in the Philippines, Dec. 22.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature
Kritsada Kata/Moment/Getty Images

A message of love

Diane Bondareff/Tishman Speyer/AP
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree stands lit on Nov. 28 in New York. The 72-foot-tall Norway spruce is covered with more than 50,000 multi-colored LED lights and a new Swarovski star and will remain lit until Jan. 7.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris and Karen Norris/staff. )

A look ahead

We won’t be publishing tomorrow, Christmas Day. To bookend today’s readings – available in the audio edition of this Daily – the Monitor’s April Austin reflects on her own annual tradition: a re-reading of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” See you Wednesday. 

More issues

2018
December
24
Monday
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