One Saturday each month, Pastor Terrell Walter meets with a group of local church leaders to eat lunch and worship together. The participants, all part of the Evangelical Church denomination, come from various ethnic backgrounds: Walter is African American. Other pastors are Caucasian, African American, Liberian, and Hispanic.

At September’s meeting in a Latino church, a pastor preached in Spanish on reconciliation, reading from 2 Corinthians 5:19. Afterward, everyone ate homemade tamales, laughed together, and prayed.

In a sunny Los Angeles parking lot, the camera pans between two white canopy tents, both filled with numerous tables. Soon, one tent will be bustling with actors and crew taking a break from work on an NBCUniversal production. The other, an outdoor dining area for Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill, will remain empty because of state coronavirus restrictions. In a social media video that went viral, saloon owner Angela Marsden lamented the unfairness of the situation, which exemplifies why many other Californians are upset, too.

Most holiday window displays feature Santa, snowmen, or nutcrackers. But at an upscale boutique in Los Angeles, window shoppers instead saw a poster of actress Alyssa Milano in a Santa hat wearing a shirt with the slogan, “Defund the Police.” Emblazoned above Milano’s picture were the words, “David call 911 there is a squirrel in our backyard!” A stuffed squirrel sat below.

House of Staunton, one of the largest wholesalers of chess sets in the United States, warns customers who visit its website, “Due to unprecedented demand, it may take extra time to ship your order.” Chess USA, a major online chess retailer with a store in New York, has a similar message in a red banner on its site: “We’re experiencing a large number of orders. … Please allow a few extra days for processing.”

Merry Christmas, cinephiles. Warner Bros. announced last week it will release the much-anticipated sequel Wonder Woman 1984 on Dec. 25 in U.S. theaters and on the streaming platform HBO Max. Because of pandemic-induced theater closures, Warner Bros. repeatedly delayed the film’s opening, originally scheduled for last summer. It will debut in international theaters on Dec. 16.

Fifth in a series on war veterans

Over Regensburg, Germany, flak not only hit the plane, but tore into a crew member and the chief pilot’s thigh. As the pilot tried to stanch bleeding, co-pilot Bill Patten took over the controls.

Patten, 26, was a pilot with the 15th Air Force. He had a wife and daughter back home in Kansas City, Mo. Once in a while he’d read a Bible someone had sent to him, but as a not-too-religious military man, he took little comfort in it.

Actress Melissa McCarthy’s “20 Days of Kindness” campaign turned out to be anything but kind to a Christian anti–sex trafficking organization.

The nonprofit Exodus Cry said HBO Max contacted it two weeks ago to say McCarthy had selected the group to receive $20,000 and free promotion on her social media accounts. The charity blitz was part of a promotional campaign for McCarthy’s upcoming HBO Max movie, Superintelligence.