Hope for the Hungry Food Pantry officially began in 2019, but the story started long before that. The church had tried more than once to launch a food program, and each time it simply never got off the ground. The desire was there. The need was there. But sometimes good work has to wait for the right moment. As a church, they had always believed deeply in the commission given in Matthew: to clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, and feed the hungry. Those words weren’t abstr

If an Appalachian schoolhouse Christmas had a heartbeat, it thumped loudest inside that little coal camp schoolhouse. The walls were thin, the floorboards creaked, and the stove rattled every time someone sneezed — but in December, it felt like the warmest place in the world.

I reckon Christmas always starts earlier in a coal camp than it does anywhere else. Not the decorations — those came later, simple as they were — but the feeling. A soft kind of excitement that settled in right after the first cold snap, when the mountains turned blue-gray and the air felt thin enough to crack

In much of Appalachia, Christmas didn’t always end when the wrapping paper was swept up. For some families, the real celebration waited quietly until January 6. They called it Old Christmas.