Word: angelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...long after the carols fade and the stars dim, the angels will still linger. In the past few years they have lodged in the popular imagination, celestial celebrities trailing clouds of glory as they come. There are angels- only boutiques, angel newsletters, angel seminars, angels on Sonya Live. A TIME poll indicates that most Americans believe in angels. Harvard Divinity School has a course on angels; Boston College has two. Bookstores have had to establish angel sections. In the most celebrated play on Broadway, Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-prize-winning Angels in America, a divine messenger ministers...
Christmas may not be the time to judge the popularity of angels; this is, even among skeptics, the season when we pay attention. We make them in snowdrifts, hang them on trees, bake them on cookies, play them in pageants. Hillary Rodham Clinton has a gold pin she wears on days she needs help: angel's wings, she explains. She made angels the theme of the White House Christmas tree this year...
Glancing around the gift shops, one might imagine that their role is purely decorative. Holiday angels are luscious creatures, plump and dimpled, all ruffled and improvised. In their tame placidity they bear no relation to the fearsome creatures in the Bible and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and Wallace Stevens. Jehovah's angels are powerful creatures; in Genesis they guard the east gates of Eden with flashing swords; in Ezekiel they overpower the prophet with awesome visions, four-headed, multiwinged and many eyed; in Revelation they do battle with a dragon. Milton describes the "flaming Seraph, fearless, though alone...
...their modern incarnation, these mighty messengers and fearless soldiers have been reduced to bite-size beings, easily digested. The terrifying cherubim have become Kewpie-doll cherubs. For those who choke too easily on God and his rules, theologians observe, angels are the handy compromise, all fluff and meringue, kind, nonjudgmental. And they are available to everyone, like aspirin. "Each of us has a guardian angel," declares Eileen Freeman, who publishes a bimonthly newsletter called AngelWatch from her home in Mountainside, New Jersey. "They're nonthreatening, wise and loving beings. They offer help whether...
...reaction. When Joey was hauled off to jail, correspondent Steve Dunleavy was there to debrief him. Husband and wife were interviewed separately throughout the week, then brought together for a climactic joint confessional. Conceded Mary Jo: "In my irrational moments, I've blamed him." Offered Joey: "I'm no angel, but I love her with all my heart...