2015 1P5 Christmas Gift Guide!

Have you been waiting until the 11th hour to do your Christmas shopping? Finding it hard to pick out just the right gift for that person in your life who would appreciate something truly unique? We asked our contributors to recommend a few of their favorite things – and we told them it would be a great idea to suggest their own work if they currently have items for sale. Without further ado, and in no particular order, the 2015 1P5 (Last-Minute) Christmas Gift Guide:

Mark Nowakowski:

Book: From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond: The Long, Jagged Trail to a Postmodern Void

For your intellectually inclined and argumentative Catholic, Thomas Storck’s work is part historical examination, part eye-opener, and part manifesto. The book is an ideal introduction (or postlude) to other vital social critiques, reminding one (in much shorter form) of the piercing analysis of Brad Gregory’s indispensable The Unintended Reformation and the social critique of Robert Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah. A quick read full of challenging ideas sure to challenge all political perspectives, Storck’s book is a great way to end or begin another year of the life of the mind.

Music: In December of 1216, Pope Honorius III approved the establishment of the Dominican Order. 800 years later, the friars of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, present their third CD in celebration of this significant anniversary: Gaudemus. Recorded in the lush acoustic setting of Washington’s Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land, the album contains a mixture of works from throughout the history of the Dominican order, including several new works written for the album. The album also includes a new setting of my own composition, O Sacrum Convivium, drawn from the famous Thomistic text of the same name.

Michael Lofton:

I have been especially enriched by Alfonso Maria De Liguori’s book, The Way of Salvation, Meditations for Every Day of the Year, translated by J. Jones.

It is an excellent daily devotional with deep meditations and prayers on various aspects of the faith by a Doctor of the Church.  It will fan the flame of love for God inside the heart of any Catholic.

Michael Foley: 

I have two book recommendations this Christmas season: one by my fellow parishioner Kevin Symonds, and one by myself. Kevin recently published Pope Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael, a fascinating history that separates fact from fiction about the Leonine Prayers we recite after Low Mass.

I, on the other hand, have written Drinking With The Saints: The Sinner’s Guide to a Holy Happy Hour, a book that pairs beer, wine, and cocktail suggestions with the feasts of the 1962 traditional Roman calendar. I describe the book as one part bartender’s guide, one part spiritual manual, a dash of irreverence, and mixed with love. Readers have told me that they appreciate not only the drink recommendations but the saints’ stories as well: some have even made it their daily family reading as a result. And for extra stocking stuffers, check out the DWTS gift items found on our website.

Peter Kwasniewski:

I recommend H.J.A. Sire’s book Phoenix from the Ashes and Ferrara’s The Great Facade (revised edition).

These two books from Angelico Press are destined to be classics of the traditional Catholic revival. Phoenix is a wide-ranging and richly detailed account by a master historian who is looking at high and low points in Catholic history and then analyzing, in depth, how the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath constitute the single greatest crisis of identity the Church has ever faced. Sire is one of the few who grapples in a serious way with the Lefebrvist movement and the sources of hope in the Church today.

In the new edition of The Great Facade, the already formidable and incomparable account of the Church’s “auto-demolition” given in the original 2002 edition is supplemented by 250 pages on the pontificates of Benedict and Francis. Ferrara demonstrates that the same stubborn problems and flawed strategies continue to dominate the scene, offering a strangely hopeful perspective for Catholics who knew all along that the regime of novelty is simply not the Catholic Faith handed down from age to age.

Will Bloomfield: 

The Little Oratory by Leila Lawler and David Clayton. This fine book offer practical tips for the family on living a daily life of prayer rooted in the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and other traditional devotions such as the Rosary. At the heart of this is a little oratory for the home, which is a prayer corner or home altar around which the family can pray.

 For your little oratory, I recommend two of my own items: The Sacred Art Series Rosary Flip Book and The Holy Gospels of St. Luke and St. John. The first adds beauty to your little oratory, reminds you to pray the Rosary each day, and helps you and your family focus while praying the Rosary; the second serves as a beautiful and easy-to-read devotional Gospel for your daily lectio divina, and it’s the perfect format (large print and stunning art) for introducing your school-aged children to the daily reading of Scripture.

Lastly, I recommend my brother Benjamin Bloomfield’s A Collection of Christmas Carols. You simply will not find a better collection of Christmas Carols! All your favorites are here and many lesser known ones that deserve rediscovery, including several medieval Latin pieces. And if you gift this at Christmas, you’ll still have 40 days (until Candlemas) to gather round the piano and sing these lovely carols with your family. The book comes in perfect or spiral binding; I prefer the spiral (available from Lulu) as it lies flat on the piano. The .pdf for the entire book is also available for free here.

Suzan Sammons:

Cornelius Pulung:

I want to recommend the biography from one of my favorite Dominican saint: St. Martin De Porres: Apostle of Charity, by Giuliana Cavallini. This book inspires me to grow in charity. The example of St. Martin shows that intense prayer life, or what Pope Benedict XVI would say “the friendship with Jesus Christ”, is the source of strength to do charity to our neighbour. I think the holiness of St. Martin would be able to enkindle the heart, and motivate us to grow in holiness.

Genevieve Kineke:

One Man, One Woman: A Catholics Guide to Defending Marriage. Marriage is so foundational to our civilisation, and yet can be so hard to defend. For decades, Dale O’Leary has done her homework in the trenches of the culture wars — especially taking note of the tactics used by the enemies of the family. In particular, she has immersed herself in the research pertaining to same-sex attraction which has consistently been misrepresented. Her great joy and driving force is her firm belief that all we know to be true as revealed by Holy Mother Church is supported by honest scientific inquiry, and all we sense to be contrary to that truth is the result of clever manipulation of that data. It is essential that we understand the tactics of the sexual left in order to love with conviction, for love properly ordered will set all of us free from the lies enveloping our age.

Dale Price:

First, Josephine Nobisso and Kathryn Szegedi’s The Weight of a Mass. This is a charmingly-told story of a poor widow who tries to get a crust of bread from a haughty, faithless baker. Sneeringly, he promises to give her bread in the amount of the “weight of a Mass.” He scrawls “one Mass” on a piece of scrap paper and places on the scale. Without spoiling it, the results prove rather surprising to the baker.

Fr. Richard Heilman:

And going off the theme of specifically Catholic books and gifts, I’d like to recommend a great gift for the dads out there (since Suzan Sammons said she had no idea, so I thought I should pinch hit!) After all, the Catholic Gentleman must have other pursuits and interests beyond the academic. (If I’m not careful, this could turn into a bourbon and tobacco guide…)

Last year, my wife got me an old-fashioned safety razor kit from Merkur. It was this one, or very nearly like it:

It may not sound like much, but this was by far my favorite gift last year, and one I still use every day. For most men, shaving is a chore. It’s something you do because you have to, not because you feel like standing in front of the mirror for an extra ten minutes each morning. But spraying gel from a can into your hand and then whisking it away with a multi-bladed Gillette disposable doesn’t exactly enhance the experience. It’s a perfunctory way to do a necessary task.

The Merkur razor is solid stainless steel, and has a nice heft to it. The brush is real badger hair. The soap that comes with the kit now is different than the one that came with mine, but if you’re going to do this, do it right. After going through several kinds, I recommend the shaving soaps from Taylor of Old Bond Street – yes, all the way from London. The two I’ve tried both have an excellent, masculine smell, like an old-time barber shop, but with a good dose of erudition. Their Sandalwood shaving cream and their Eton College variety both smell excellent, and each is well-accented by their respective aftershaves. It’s like getting a bespoke suit – for your face.

Are they more expensive than Edge Gel? You bet. But each tub of soap has lasted me several months, even with daily shaving, and the quality can’t be beat. More importantly, the experience of lathering up a nice foam with your badger brush and getting the closest shave of your life is worth the extra outlay. And ladies, your husband will — to borrow a phrase from the Old Spice Guy and then one-up him on it — become the man your man should smell like.

The upside is that over the long run, the expense of the kit, and even the soap, is most likely undercut by the phenomenally low cost of the razors. I buy the Personna Double Edge blades in the 100-pack. And let me tell you, for only $12, I am destroying the yearly cost of Gillette blades (which are now about $40 for a 16 pack at Costco, I believe) and I can only imagine how long they’ll last me at about two weeks per blade. (Your beard, and thus your mileage, will vary.)

Men go to the barber, they don’t “get their hair done”; men grab whatever semi-sharp tool they can find to cut their nails, they don’t get manis and pedis…well, some do, but I’m guessing they probably don’t read this website. Shaving, though, is something we simply can’t avoid unless you prefer the full grizzly beard. Making that experience enjoyable, manly, and aromatically pleasing are all worthwhile pursuits.