My piece at Ethika Politika: Aristotle’s Key to Christmas
What Aristotle Says about Christmas

John Cuddeback
John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is baconfromacorns.com.
More to Consider
- Living with Former Friends
“Surely he should keep a remembrance of their former intimacy…” Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Sometimes it feels like Aristotle foresaw all the vicissitudes of my life. He muses regarding…
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What Does Christmas Feel Like?
Something of those Christmas Eve services arises in me every time I watch a sacristan light a candle.
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Combatting the Christmas-Industrial-Complex
One can have a very merry Christmas with great simplicity. And maybe, thinking of charity toward our less fortunate neighbors, modeling simplicity has its virtues.




