The Church of No People

Blergh…

Okay, I’m still recovering from Christmas.  I just did a marathon of visiting across the state, fueled by a combination of sugary Christmas crap…and meat…so much meat.  I did try to pace myself on my Christmas eating.  Although I continued eating even after my stomach had completely filled, I did stop before my esophagus completely filled up.  Once you eat so much that the food doesn’t go anywhere when you swallow, it’s not pretty.  Nevertheless, I have put on enough weight that the keys on my keyboard are no longer big enough for my fingers.  I’ve ordered a special typing wand from Amazon to help me out.

I’m sure you’re still recovering from the stupor of Christmas churching and visiting and gifting and eating.  I’m starting out the week light with a selection of excellent Christmas blogging for your perusal.  Consider this your blogging bloody mary to help you recover, wake up, and get back in the swing of things.  I promise I’ll be back on Wednesday with some blogging of my own, for realsies…

First up, last year I finished the Christmas season by sharing a letter from Santa from my blogging friend, Kathy.  It is the most excellent letter a child has ever recieved from Santa.  You have to read it in its entirety here…

“Now as to your question of whether or not I am real. The simple answer is yes, I am. The complete answer requires a bit more complicated explanation…I would also like to clear up a little rumor about me that has been going around since before I can remember. It is not true that only good boys and girls get presents from Santa. There are many very good children that get very little; there are others who have been very naughty indeed, yet get lots of toys…”

Next up is the very best Christmas letter I have ever read from Stacy and her family.  My wife and I copied this letter verbatim, changing the names, and sent it out to our closer friends.  Hilarious.  Read it all here…

“We had all four seasons this year. In the winter it was cold for the most part. Some days it snowed. We would look outside and say, “Look. Snow.” We enjoyed saying this. Then we had spring. Some days it was warmer, other days it was not. Then summer came. When it was hot we would come inside. When we did this we might have a cold drink or say, “It’s hot today.” But we did not say that every day, just some days. Then it was Fall. We had colder weather. The leaves came off the trees. “Look”, we said. “Leaves.””

Finally, the story of really the worst Christmas pageant ever, from Hyperbole and a Half.  Finding the church’s pagaent a letdown, Allie sets out to give Jesus a proper pageant, but finds her family’s acting skills and motivation also lacking severely.  Check it out here…

In the meantime, how did your Christmas turn out?  Was it as good (or as bad) as you had anticipated?  Have you rid yourselves of the relatives, or are you still running the Christmas marathon?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, the Christmas season for me can be kind of, for lack of a better word, sucky.

And not the delightful kind of sucky that Buddy the Elf discovered with the mailroom tubes on his face.  Just regular, plain old sucky.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Christmas.  It’s just the month before Christmas that’s just sometimes a bit of a hassle.  I’m not trying to scrooge it up; sometimes it’s just overwhelming.

First of all, my little suburb is about the worst place to be during shopping season.  We have this enormous, throbbing, diseased tumor of stores and strip malls that’s growing on our main highway.  Dozens of stores stacked on top of stores, all crammed together in less than a square mile, with about 50,000 people there at any given time.  It’s awful.

Not to mention, although I like giving gifts, the task of simply figuring out what to give everyone is a lot of work.  I don’t like to give gift cards, because it feels like we’re just trading money.  Plus, I know I’ve got four or five unused gift cards sitting around myself.

Between two families, plus friends, my wife and I have a lot of Christmas obligations.  Plus, we like to throw a Christmas party.  There’s food to make and cards to mail, and gifts to wrap, and trees to kill, and sweaters to wear, and decorations to decorate and eggnog to drink and places to be.  It’s a lot of work.

And somewhere in there, I’m supposed to find the time for some solemn reflection on the real meaning of the holiday.  Which is nearly impossible.  I’m not sure why Jesus picked such a busy holiday to get born on in the first place.  Seriously, if Jesus had been born on any other holiday, it would be a lot easier to reflect on his radiant little baby face.  Christmas is just a really inopportune time for the Savior of mankind to want some attention.

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At just a week away from Christmas, I still have not finished my shopping.

It’s kind of funny.  We go to so much hassle and inconvenience to give each other gifts.  We fight crowds and cold weather.  And then what do we do a few weeks after Christmas?

We forget about the gifts.

I think I know why.  For all the trouble we go to, and the thought that can go into a gift, we never get the best gifts at Christmas.  The best gifts were doled out over the whole year.  Those are the gifts that matter so much more than a wrapped up toy.

Some of you survived cancer, or some other disease this year.  Some of you walked away from an addiction.  Some of you got out of a bad relationship, or started a good relationship.  Some of you had children.  Some of you put a family back together.  Some of you felt happy for the first time in a while.  Some of you got a job you really needed.  Some of you met Jesus for the first time.  And some of you are having a really tough year…but you’re still here.  God’s brought you through circumstances you never thought you could survive.  And some of you had just a very ordinary year.  But I always say the biggest gifts are sometimes that nothing happened! 

The funny thing is, sometimes we even forget the really good gifts, and just skim over them, like nothing happened.

Something else I’ve noticed.  As a kid, Christmas was it.  There was no bigger excitement than the thrill of new things I so desperately coveted.  One of my favorite gifts was a Mr. Potato Head.  I haven’t felt that way about Christmas, or potatoes in years.  Being an adult doesn’t afford so many pure joys as childhood.  But it’s those really good gifts that happen thoughout the year that maybe make an adult feel like a kid at Christmas again.

Me?  It was a pretty ordinary year.  That’s something I’m thankful for.  Although it’s not a promotion by any means, I was able to take a new job in a terrible job market.  My wife and I haven’t wanted for anything.  We’ve been married another year, and I’m still relatively healthy, though I’ve had to start seeing my chiropractor brother-in-law.  I built great friendships and I’m part of a church I love.  Whatever I open on Christmas can’t compare to that, and I feel truly excited when I think about those big gifts I’ve torn open this year.

I want to hear from you.  What were the real gifts you got this year, the kind that made you feel like a kid at Christmas?

Well, it’s that time of year, the time of year for colorful, festive Christmas letters, sent to all the friends and family you consider worth the postage!

I’ll admit, this year I’m slacking on the Christmas letter writing.  Partly because any and everything anyone would care to know about me is on Facebook.  I was even considering just printing out my Facebook profile and sending that to all our friends and relatives.

But, letter writing is one of those timeless traditions that should not be left behind, and I am determined to keep it alive, so I’m here to help you craft the perfect letters to send to the people you don’t quite love enough to visit in person for the holidays.

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