Thanks to all of you who make frequent stops here part of your routine. Now grab the kids and ask them to count all the animals in this nativity scene that are not mentioned in the Biblical account of Christ’s birth.
December 25, 2012
December 16, 2012
Cliff Richard: Little Town
This one is for those of you who do NOT have high speed internet and don’t usually get to watch the videos posted here. The video is simply a single slide, so you’ll not have a problem. I want everyone to be able to enjoy the song.
This song was my first introduction to what is a relative multitude of pop Christmas songs Cliff Richard has recorded. I wrote about some of these here four years ago — here is a link to that article — but didn’t have time to see if all the links are current.
December 8, 2012
Our Journey Back in Time
Last night was weird.
We drove along a road beside the lake that seemed to get narrower and narrower. And darker and darker. No lights. No passing cars. Not even those little reflector things. A land that time, and cell phone coverage, had forgotten; remarkable since my wife and I are with separate carriers. We’ve driven this route in daytime at least 50 times, but on this occasion, it seemed like a scene from Jurassic Park.
And then, just as I was about to give up and turn around, we found the recently restored church. We parked our car next to the building up a dirt road where, I swear, once the car headlights went off, you could not see your own hand in front of you.
The church was brightly lit by generator and the occasional candle. There was no heat. The organ was a pump organ which occasionally had a few stuck notes. Cold, hard wooden pews. Photocopied carol sheets with a little flap stapled into a page where a verse had been left out. Did I mention that there was no heat?
And there, in our trip back in time, we joined about 35 people — none of whom we knew — and sang Christmas songs and carols; requests randomly bouncing back and forth from the religious to the ridiculous. With each new song, I could see my breath as I sang.
A break was scheduled in the middle for hot cider and hot chocolate. We didn’t know that. We’d seen the spread on a table at the front when we arrived and had just wandered up and started munching and sipping. Oh well, we had a head start on everyone else.
A few people spoke to us, but even with the commonality of the Christmas songs, we felt like outsiders. Life in a small town, I suppose, or in this case a non-town; a non-village; a barely hamlet. Some of these people actually live in this middle of nowhere. Maybe we’d simply lost points by descending on the snacks prematurely.
The organist let me have a go at a verse of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. My aunt had a pump organ when I was much younger, and I remembered to keep working the pedals. Great memories.
Lots of good singing, but all in all a rather strange night in a surreal setting.
Did I mention there was no heat?
November 22, 2012
January 9, 2012
Our Post-Christmas Credit Card Crisis
Each year we say that instead of giving gifts to each other, we’re going to do something significant to help the third world, and a couple of years ago we got more serious about this and began a Christmas tradition of donating to water projects — the repair and restoration of fresh water wells — through the organization Partners International.
This year Partners sent us a catalog containing a variety of projects to which we could donate, and I decided to let the family have greater input into this than in previous years. The various needs in the Canadian organization’s mailing called Hope in Action were divided into different categories such as,
- Children and Education
- Entrepreneurship
- Justice Issues
- Women’s issues
- Christian Witness
- Health and Wellness
while Partners in the U.S. has a greater variety of potential giving themes in their catalog called Harvest of Hope.
The family seemed especially interested in projects which keep young women out of the sex trade overseas, or projects which help them not end up there to begin with. One of these is listed on my receipt as item 8007C — Mahima Home — A Refuge for Girls Rescued From the Sex Trade — $300.00
We selected three projects that were certainly more expensive than our previous investment in water wells, and then added one more to top it off to an even number, a number that was larger than I expected when we first sat down around the computer. “Oh well, it’s only money;” I remember saying at the time.
But then, like so many other families that overextend themselves over the holidays, we got a credit card bill which contained both our Partners projects and our regular expenses, not to mention the Christmas gifts that we actually gave.
And it’s all due on Friday.
“I think we need prayer;” I said to my wife when she read me the bill.
I then told her, “I think we should ask the pastor for prayer because I’ve run up our credit card on prostitutes.”
It would be funny if it were funny.
It got me thinking however, what about the person who does find themselves with an impossible credit card bill because they did spend too much on hookers? You’ve got the sin of fornication combined with the sin of overspending, and they don’t cancel each other out.
I might just leave the prayer request at our church’s prayer email address anyway. We’ll call it increasing global awareness.
December 25, 2011
Show Me The Manger
Here’s another one of Ruth’s songs.
From our house to your house, Merry Christmas.
Show me the manger
Show me where life begins again
Show me the manger
Show me where hope and peace come breaking in
Show me the shelter and the family and the faces and the dawn
Of untidy love that’s forever, forever from now on
Once I’ve seen the manger
How could I ever turn away?
Show me the angels
Show me a hint of what Heaven can do
Show me the star now
Show me a flash of forever shining through
Show me the beauty and the glory and the music and the flame
Show me the power of the promise and the power of the Name
Once I’ve seen the glory
How could I ever turn away?
Show me the baby
Though I don’t begin to understand
How such an ordinary baby
Could be God becoming man
Could he be born to live to die to live again?
To be the life, be the way, be the truth, be the plan
Once I’ve seen the baby
How could I ever turn away?
Show me the manger, show me the family,
Show me the angels, show me the star now
But once I’ve seen the Saviour,
I will never turn away.
December 24, 2011
Making Your Giving List and Checking It Twice
Being self employed and in retail means Christmas time isn’t a lot of fun. We just made the last of our supplier payments online. We don’t pay ourselves a salary, so getting bills paid is a major goal.
So this is a good time to start thinking about our personal finances, and in particular, our charitable donations. Not knowing exactly what our income is going to be makes it harder to figure out what we should be giving, but I don’t know anybody who, at tax time in April, looks at their receipts and says, “I should have given less.“
Giving shouldn’t be done in December just to get a tax receipt. We give because we’ve been blessed, and because God commands it. But December is a good time to take stock of our personal finances and see what we can do to help others.
You may be tempted to give something to charities in the broader market, but remember that the broader population will respond somewhat to their appeals. I believe there are Christian causes that only we can give to, and we should “do good to all… especially those which are of the household of faith.”
So who can we bless this year? Here’s some suggestions:
- Our first responsibility is to our local church, the place we call our spiritual home, where we receive teaching, prayer support and fellowship
- If there’s a “second” on the list, for many this year it is giving to relief and development in the third world, especially projects which are bringing fresh water wells to areas that don’t have potable water, aid the fight against human trafficking, provide start-up funds for micro-businesses, deal with health issues in countries where access to medicine is still limited, or assist oppressed people — especially women — see justice.
- Is there someone in your area who does student ministry who is lacking in financial support? Consider urban missionaries and youth workers with Youth For Christ, Campus Crusade, InterVarsity and YWAM.
- What about camp ministries? These make a huge difference in the lives of children, but aren’t fully supported by fees. Is there a Christian summer residential camp that is in need of funds for capital projects or to sponsor children in the summer?
- What about your local Christian school? A regional Bible College, or Christian University College? Do they need money for capital projects, or are they operating at a deficit?
- Do you have a local Christian radio station? This isn’t limited to the “preacher programs,” the stations themselves often need additional support to pay staff and overhead.
- Who is working with the poor in your community? Is there someone providing meals, or transportation or moral support to people who are disadvantaged economically?
- If you own or work in a bookstore, that means you love the written word. Consider those who are putting the scriptures in the hands of people who don’t have them, such as Wycliffe Bible Translators or the various Bible Societies.
- You first considered your local church. Is there another church in your community that is doing good but struggling financially? This year we heard a story of one church putting another local church on their missions budget with a sizable donation. We’re all playing on the same team, and what a wonderful witness this is to those who think we’re competing.
Also, there may be a family in your community, or in your extended family, or someone you work with who cannot provide you with a tax receipt but needs a blessing this Christmas. Consider also directly donating to someone who is in need.
December 18, 2011
An Original Christmas Song
With a busy pre-Christmas schedule eating away at our time, the best I can offer this morning is a feeble attempt to boost the YouTube stats on our modest Christmas song video.
As I wrote last year, “It’s not the musical quality, or the recording quality; it’s just my wife and I with some extra time… and a desire to share with my blog audience a song I’ve been singing somewhere every Christmas for a rather long number of years.
“There’s something about the idea of being home for Christmas; something about the fact the pace of life slows down for a day or two. No wonder that it’s so difficult for people who are alone on December 25th; being with friends or family seems to define the day.Which is why people where I live have revived the annual “Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day” for people who don’t have close family, or can’t afford all the trimmings of the season; people who don’t have a home to go home to.
“We didn’t have time to do this up as professionally as we might have, but I hope you’ll kick back and enjoy the song and its ideas. Most of the technical work was that of my wife, Ruth; who, on some of this, was learning on the fly. If we could ever cut loose from our individual projects, we could be the Christian version of Pomplamouse!
“Most important, I hope you’ll reconnect with the thought that the familiar birth of Christ narrative in Luke is the start of much, much longer story. One that continues into eternity.”
December 6, 2011
Will This Be a Hit or a Flop?
For our American friends, last night was the occasion of the 47th airing of A Charlie Brown Christmas. 47 years of the same show in an endless repeat. But according to this National Review story, by Lee Habeeb, the show almost didn’t happen:
As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a groundbreaking program in so many ways, as we learned watching the great PBS American Masters series on Charles Schulz, known by his friends and colleagues as “Sparky.” It was based on the comic strip Peanuts, and was produced and directed by former Warner Brothers animator Bill Melendez, who also supplied the voice for Snoopy.
We learned in that PBS special that the cartoon happened by mere serendipity.
“We got a call from Coca-Cola,” remembered Melendez. “And they said, ‘Have you and Mr. Schulz ever considered doing a Christmas show with the characters?’ and I immediately said ‘Yes.’ And it was Wednesday and they said, ‘If you can send us an outline by Monday, we might be interested in it.’ So I called Sparky on the phone and told him I’d just sold ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ and he said, ‘What’s that?’ and I said, ‘It’s something you’ve got to write tomorrow.’”
We learned in that American Masters series that Schulz had some ideas of his own for the Christmas special, ideas that didn’t make the network suits very happy. First and foremost, there was no laugh track, something unimaginable in that era of television. Schulz thought that the audience should be able to enjoy the show at its own pace, without being cued when to laugh. CBS created a version of the show with a laugh track added, just in case Schulz changed his mind. Luckily, he didn’t.
The second big battle was waged over voiceovers. The network executives were not happy that the Schulz’s team had chosen to use children to do the voice acting, rather than employing adults. Indeed, in this remarkable world created by Charles Schulz, we never hear the voice of an adult.
The executives also had a problem with the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. They thought the music would not work well for a children’s program, and that it distracted from the general tone. They wanted something more . . . well . . . young.
Last but not least, the executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible.
There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands. [...continue reading...]
The CBS executives saw what they had as, at best, a tax write-off.
I couldn’t help but think that actually parallels the original Christmas story in more ways than one.
John the Baptist was sure that Jesus was the Messiah on the day that Jesus stepped into the Jordan River to be baptized. But later, in the isolation of a jail cell, he wondered if had backed that wrong horse. He thought he a flop on his hands.
Certainly there were people in the crowd who loved the miracles and the multiplication of the fish and bread that fed 5,000 men and countless women and children. But when he started turning his remarks to the “hard sayings” and spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, the crowd thinned out considerably. Having seen other Messiah figures come and go, they figured that, once again, they had a flop on their hands.
Judas Iscariot was one of the original twelve, and no doubt entered into that select group with enthusiasm and optimism. But into the third year of apprenticeship with the this particular rabbi, dreams of political conquest and liberation from the Romans turned into disillusionment when the talk turned to a Messiah that would suffer and die. Like the parliamentarians of today who ‘cross the floor’ to join the other party, Judas figured he had a flop on his hands.
Time exonerated the decision and vision by Charles Shultz, and the events in Acts 2 showed the world that something new and exciting was beginning; that instead of a flop, the disciples had a hit on their hands.
And today, there are those who complain that the Christian faith and worldview is foolishness. They have a checklist of things that they would change about the Christ story. They think we have a flop on our hands.
But the ratings have yet to come out on that one. The ultimate scene in the play has yet to appear on stage. Stay tuned…
We do know how the above story ended, though:
To the surprise of the executives, 50 percent of the televisions in the United States tuned in to the first broadcast. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit; it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.
Linus’s recitation was hailed by critic Harriet Van Horne of the New York World-Telegram, who wrote, “Linus’ reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.”
December 4, 2011
When There’s No Margin in Your Life
I want to extrapolate something different that was triggered by something our pastor said this morning.
He was talking about the importance of having margin in your life. Margin to hear from God, to wait before Him and to expect miracles. That’s vital at a time of year when margin is slim because of the busy-ness of the season.
But then he picked up his Bible and talked about the margin that exists on each page; space to add your own notes and record observations. I’ve thought of margin on several levels but never from a printing or graphic arts perspective.
In printing, margin is necessary because sometimes the paper gets trimmed a little off center, just like the time runs out on some days (and weeks, and months, and years) a little unexpectedly. Without some white space, there is the risk the text would simply get cut off.
But if your house is like mine, you probably got flyers, circulars, brochures or whatever they call them where you live delivered to your door or mailbox; and if you examine different types of printed matter, you see that in many cases there is no margin at all because the photo or background color is meant to look like it runs right to the edge. In fact it runs a good inch (2 cm) over the edge and is then trimmed back.
In graphic arts, this is called a bleed, and the designer will markup the text with the word ‘bleed’ to tell the printing people that the background gradient or pattern should overrun the page to be cut to size in the trim process.
And that, is my message to my readers for this Christmas, straight from the graphic art and design industry: If you don’t have margin, you bleed.
[insert rim shot here]
If we don’t (literally) take the time to build margin into the busyness of the holiday season, we pay the price for it. If we try to do too much, there’s pain. If we fail to accomplish essentials we should have prioritized, there’s tears.
Which is odd considering the potentially frantic story of incarnation — in a crowded village that has run out of hotel accommodation because of a census registration – begins on what we regard as such a peaceful, silent night.
The celebration of the birth of Christ was never intended to drive us crazy on an annual basis. Slow down, and take a cue from the printing industry: If there’s no margin, you bleed.
