How Jesus became God and why
 Lloyd Geering traces how the followers of Jesus first came to see him as Christ, later as the Messiah, later still as son of God, and not until three centuries later, as God, second person of the Holy Trinity.
1 How did Jesus become Christ? In 1974 a Roman Catholic scholar called Peter deRosa published a book called Jesus Who Became Christ. (Incidentally, not long before that, Peter deRosa, after an impressive academic career, had been dismissed as Vice-Principal of Corpus Christi College, London. That was a college for training Catholic teachers, which the Catholic Church closed down because it was becoming too radical.) We shall start with the question Peter deRosa set out to answer – How did Jesus become Christ? – for it is the first part of the answer to the question of how Jesus became God.
There are two ways of understanding this question and there is a rather subtle but extremely important difference between the two. We may call the two ways the objective approach and the subjective approach.
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Innocent when you dream
Through the eyes of the country's children, Billy Leahy learns that art is not all about rules, concepts, abstractions and justifications
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Birds:The Wren - The Bird of Christmas
 Meanwhile, here we are in the season of the Hunting of the Wren. Bunches of boys would hunt and kill a wren – not something likely to be a long-drawn out process when it was boys, stones and dogs vs. the wren. The dead bird would be tied to the top of a pole or holly bush and garlanded with coloured papers or ribbons.
Then, in straw masks or with faces blackened with burnt cork, the Wran Boys would call from house to house to raise cash for their dance that evening, chanting:
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Rivals fail to crack The Da Vinci Code
In a year that the heavy-hitters didn't quite deliver, Dan Brown's much derided and debunked thriller ruled. Ronan Browne looks back at fiction from 2004
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Ireland's tainted economic Renaissance: exceptional times marred by insensibility
These are exceptional times in the life of this country. In a decade or two from now and certainly in a century, the years we are living through will be regarded as a renaissance. Spectacular economic growth and job creation. Success in achieving peace in Northern Ireland even if the last ingredients of peace have yet to be embedded. The transformation of our cities and the environment, and by no means all of this transformation disfiguring. A flourishing of literature, music and theatre. Impressive success in sports from football, to rugby, GAA and horse racing. Glowing recognition in Europe and around some of the rest of the world for these successes. A buoyant confidence in a country that had lost self belief half a century ago. A sturdy unself-conscious identity.
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From here to Clare
Eithne Earley-Jenkerson writes on Seamus Heaney's poem Postscript, Israel and her return to Ireland.
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Opinion:English placenames banned in Gaeltacht
The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, éamon ó Cuív, has signed an order preventing the use of English-language or anglicised versions of place names in the Gaeltacht. The law is to come into force next March.
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Opinion:Dog gone: tribute
Our Cara is dead. In the midst of the frenzy of meetings with governments and others, and endless flights across the Irish Sea, Cara Adams, a 10-year-old Rottweiler and a cherished member of our family, died.
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A cold Christmas
 300 people will spend the festive season on the street, many others cannot afford Christmas and the Government has failed to make any real dent in housing waiting lists, writes Maev-Ann Wren
Some 200 people will be sleeping rough on Dublin streets this Christmas and a further 100 will be out in the cold across the country, according to the Simon Communities of Ireland. This year organisations working with the homeless are particularly concerned for their health and well-being following recent forecasts of severe weather.
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Architecture:Hideaway Extension, Dublin 4
The existing house was a dim, Victorian-terraced house in Dublin 4, with idle external spaces. The cooking and dining facilities were inadequate and the brief to the architects, Box Architecture, was to employ and reorganise the external spaces to create a vibrant dining and living experience.
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A present only a mother could love
It was so much easier when you were a kid. Every gift you gave your mother at Christmas was the perfect gift. Whatever tacky, made in Taiwan, plastic ornament you gave her brought a beaming smile to her face. The Bet Lynch dangling "gold" earrings you gave her when you were eight, she wore with pride all through Christmas day. Even when her earlobes turned green, she persevered and insisted they were just what she would have chosen for herself.
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Costly
France's best effort at a national title, Le Monde is a superb publication, but has never succeeded in being a newspaper for all of the country – and it's a big lossmaker. By Conor Brady
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Robbing old people and the law
Brendan Corish, a revered leader of the Labour Party, was the first to allow older people to be deprived of their medical cards, writes Vincent Browne
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Criminality or Resistance
Events and debates in recent weeks have brought to a head a central theme in the Iraq occupation and in the Irish "peace process", but it's a theme that the media can't seem to get their heads around. Admittedly, it's a tough one: when does "resistance" become "criminality"?
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More ups than downs
It was another dreadful Olympics for the Irish, so Paul Rouse focuses on the highs of the sporting year and there were plenty of those, from the Triple Crown to the All-Ireland hurling final
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Magic and loss
The well-worn tourist trail that leads from Bangkok to the islands is best avoided in place of the wonder of Kanchantaburi says Emma Browne
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Snowy regrets - snezhoye sozhaleniye
 To put the record straight, my childhood Christmas memories are non-existent, and the reason is simple: in the Soviet Union, where I grew up, we were not allowed to celebrate it. Instead of Jesus Christ's birthday we were supposed to celebrate Lenin's on 22 April.
This is not to say that I was entirely unaware of Christmas, for – from the age of 12 or 13 – I would clandestinely listen to the Queen's Christmas address on the BBC World Service purely for the purposes of language-learning. The reception was poor, and I had to keep the sound low not to be overheard by neighbours. I (or, more likely, my parents) could get into a serious trouble for tuning to hostile foreign broadcasts.
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