Author Archives: Dave

I find it slightly laughable that modern Evangelicals have decided to make a controversy over the phrase “Merry Christmas” over the last few years. There’s even an organization called Operation: Just Say Merry Christmas. While I recognize that we’re really trying to do something good here, let’s stop for a moment and analyze this.

At first, I got caught up in this wave, thinking that it was a legitimate gripe. Since then, my perspectives have broadened and I’ve educated myself. I know many different Believers that belong to many different branches of this thing we call Christianity…of our faith. We’ve applied all of these different labels to ourselves in an effort to identify our ideas, and, as a result, there are all sorts of Believers who love God that fall all over the denominational spectrum. That means that not all of them celebrate Christmas. Many Believers celebrate Advent, or Hanukkah, of Boxing Day, depending on their country and ethnic origin. So, in my mind, instead of it being somehow “anti-Christian” to use the phrase “Happy Holidays,” it actually seems more prudent, because it is inclusive of everyone’s semantics. For those of us in American Christianity (shallow as it may be), “Happy Holidays” can include Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day as well, so, again, its more logical.

Of course, there’s also the age-old controversy of writing “Merry X-Mas” instead writing out the word “Christmas.” Growing up in the restrictively conservative type of religion that I did, I was always told that this was an evil idea, to “remove Christ from Christmas.” First of all, Christmas was originally a pagan holiday: it just so happens that we choose to use it to celebrate Christ’s birth today because the Roman Catholic Church made some decisions to this effect a long time ago. Secondly, in the Greek language (in which the New Testament was originally written), the “Ch” sound in “Christ” is spelled with an “X.” Therefore, “X-Mas” is actually just an abbreviation of “Christmas,” because it is essentially an Americanized way to shorten the Greek name, “Christos” (transliterated here).

Seriously, there are a lot of Believers out there who need to educate themselves. I appreciate their passion, I truly do, but they’re permitting themselves to get caught up in petty things that aren’t worth the time, and giving us all…and, worse, Him…a bad reputation for it. We could be spending our time, money, and energy on so many more worthwhile things.

Of course, if you’d rather spend the money on “Just Say Merry Christmas” bracelets than on a gift or assistance for an orphan or widow in distress (James 1:27), be my guest. But honestly, I wonder if God wouldn’t rather you just kept the money to yourself in that case. Just a thought.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Advent, or Merry Boxing Day to you all.

…and to all a good night.

Tonight Karen and I planned to put up our Christmas tree and decorations and so forth. Except, by the time I got home for the evening, we were rushing to get dinner down before she had to leave for her obligations for the evening (ultimately she didn’t even manage to eat a wonderful dinner she had prepared), and we hopefully talked of getting it done tomorrow. Except that tomorrow I’m tied up putting the finishing touches on the set for a Christmas drama I’m directing this weekend. Which I’m also rehearsing for Thursday, and…well, no tree until the weekend. If we’re lucky.

After she leaves, I realize that Thursday evening is my last chance to get Christmas cards to my drama friends at my faith community. So, I scrambled to run out and buy cards and sign them and then panicked when I realized that I haven’t sent cards to my family on the West Coast, and God only knows what time they’ll get there now.

So, in the interest of being productive, I took the opportunity to pull Karen’s gift out of hiding and wrap it while she’s gone. I can’t wrap worth anything, so I searched for a gift bag and tissue paper, my usual tactic. We didn’t have anything big enough to come close to fitting the box (why are things packaged in such big freakin’ boxes????). So, grumbling through the apartment using foul language, I went in search of wrapping paper, knowing the bleak future I had attempting to wrap the gift.

No wrapping paper. None. A scrap here and there, but nothing in the apartment with enough paper to wrap the gift.

So, it got stuffed back into hiding until the weekend, when I won’t get any of the other stuff I have to get done done because I’ll be dealing with all of the Christmas stuff that I didn’t get done tonight.

Then I had to talk to my less-than-techno-savvy parents about accessing my wish list on Amazon.

Then I had a small panic attack thinking about how we’re going to afford all of the people we have yet to buy for.

Why can’t we just celebrate the Christmas season without all of this? Why the materialism? Why all the stuff and the headaches? I just want to go be with family and enjoy the company of loved ones and forget all of this stress.

No wonder people hate the holidays. Sheesh.

My wife loves trees. Not surprisingly, I’ve found a new appreciation for that part of nature. I’m a beach person myself, but I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty in what’s outside my window in the morning. I feel sort of like my friend Carly, who loves Autumn so much (and has some beautiful photography to prove it), as I become fascinated by the colors. Earlier this week, I was looking out my living room window, and I noticed this tree that sits just off to the left of my view. The tree was completely and vibrantly yellow, and was backlit by the morning sun, causing the yellow leaves to glow. It occurs to me how carefully that tree was crafted, how gently it was sculpted. Recently I read Coffin’s poem, The Dead Bittern, where he states that “tremendous pains had been expended” on a single animal. I’ve been learning to see the beauty in what God has made.

So, I had an epiphany this week. Just as carefully as he painted and sculpted what surrounds us, even more carefully has He crafted us. I’ve been trying to be intentional about seeing the individuals that I come into contact with in my day to day as the works of art that they are. The epiphany comes into play, though, as I’m continuously trying to reconcile the fact that I’m a counselor in my day job, and that this is so counter intuitive to my creative impulse at first blush. It occurred to me that, if all of these people are the dynamic and living works of art that I’ve discovered them to be (because life is art), with all of their frustrating tendencies and idiosyncratic quirks as signatures, then relating to them is not scientific (as in the way I view counseling), but, in fact, creative and artistic. So, as I relate to people through the day; as I choose the words with which to interact and dialogue with them, or the way I look at them (or whether or not I even look at them) as they pass, I’m engaging in artistic expression. Perhaps that’s the key to this over commercialized concept of community that Believers love to talk about these days.

Bonhoffer said that community just happens, and that its our job as Believers to accept it and work with it as it happens, not to be going around intentionally trying to force it and make it happen. If that’s the case, then I encounter this community every day, and how I engage it is a form of creativity, not scientific inquiry.

And that makes me want to get up in the morning.