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Christmas Shorts: Why We Like A Fat Santa!

Posted in Advent 2011, tagged , , , on December 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Santa is fat! When I was in the 4th grade, I played Santa Claus in our school play. Does that tell you anything?  I was the biggest kid in the class. If you want to work as a department store Santa, you have to either be fat or have a padded suit. The American Santa Claus is definitely fat.

Interestingly enough, most iterations of Saint Nick in the world are just the opposite.  Nikolaus in Germany is tall and lean. Some Nicks have scrawny beards and look like they have been sleeping on the streets since last Christmas.

Americans would never allow Santa to get so emaciated. We leave milk and cookies to fatten him up on the one night that he really works!

Now hold that thought!

Jesus is NEVER pictured as anything but lean! Occasionally in modern depiction, he might be burly—but NEVER fat!  Even Baby Jesus is never fat like the little cherubs that encircle the manger!

We have chosen our own pictures of both St. Nicolas and Jesus—since there are no photos of either.  So why are we only comfortable with a fat Santa and a lean Jesus?  It would be un-American to change one and sacrilegious to distort the other.

Here are a couple of thoughts:

  • It has to do with wealth and opulence. Santa is about gifts—lots of gifts! Santa is about feasts! Jesus, on the other hand, was poor. He had to borrow food from little kids or go to some wealthy person’s house for a big meal. His supper is just bread and wine.
  • It has to do with this world and the next.  Santa lives on top of the world. His “dominion” is material,  and he is celebrated because he operates in this world.  In contrast, Jesus’ message was about the kingdom of heaven being at hand. He left in a cloud, promising to come again and collect his own who will meet him in the air.

So the question is, who do we like better?  The guy who brings us stuff, who is fat and jolly and who loves a good party, or the lean, sober—sometimes sad—one, with no jingles, no cute stuffed red-nosed pets, and whose promises of good times all seem so long from now?

Knowing the world we live in, I suspect I know why Santa has stolen Christmas away from Jesus.

So who am I celebrating?

 

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Christmas Shorts

Posted in Advent 2011, tagged , on December 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As we lead up to Christmas and life is getting hectic with Christmas cheer, I’ve decided to use the blog to share some very small, short seasonal thoughts for you. 

Santa, Rudolph, and Snoopy were lying there on the ground, face down, emaciated, completely deflated. And it is still 12 days until Christmas!  What’s the deal?

That was my question as I was walking through our neighborhood this morning, looking at all the inflatables lying shrunken and withered in front of otherwise normal households.

The Christmas messages were all still in place. The electronic clock at one high-tech house was still counting down the seconds until Christmas, but there were the Christmas heroes—wasted!

And just last night, they had been bright, cheery, and all pumped up!

“Pumped up!” That’s when the similarity occurred to me: am I just like Santa??  Do some of us go to church or small group or BSF or camp or . . .  and get all pumped up, but the minute the sun comes up, we wither in the daylight?

Jesus talked about the seeds that fell on shallow dirt, took root, but then withered in the day’s heat! His parable holds together better than my deflated Santa Clauses, but I think it is pretty much the same point.

Inflatable Christians make a sad scene. Sure, they look great when they are all pumped up, but what’s the message when we lie face down, deflated by the normalcy of the world we live in?

I keep thinking about the opposite of these inflatables being something solid. The Hebrew writer talked about solid food being for the mature (5:14) and encouraged his hearers to eat solid food!

OK, that’s as far as we will go with this idea:  If you find yourself deflated, check your diet and make sure you are not just filling up on emotions or relationships or self-indulgence or anything less than the solids that God offers you!

 

 

 

 

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Preparing Your Kids For Christmas – Second Advent Week

Posted in Advent 2011, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 8, 2011| 2 Comments »

How did that first Advent week go with your children?  Did you ask them the questions I suggested to see what their framework for Christmas looks like?  I’m very interested in their answers. Please share them with us all. Use the “Comments” section to tell us what your child/children said.

For the second Advent week, we want to focus on the angel telling Mary that she is going to have a baby and on the story of the three wise men.

Text:      Luke 1:26-38

Big Idea:              Nine months before Christmas Day, God told Mary she was going to have a baby boy. Jesus was born like every other baby—fully human—but the Son of God.

Activities:

  1. You have to read the story to your children, but read it from The Message or a Children’s Bible—but not a story book.  Then use these conversation starters to talk about it at the appropriately level with your child.
    1. Why do you think God chose Mary to be the mother of Jesus?
    2. Who was going to be the father?  (You don’t have to get into sexual questions here—unless you need to—but it is important for kids to learn that God is the Father of Jesus, not Joseph.
    3. Why do you think Mary was a little afraid of the angel Gabriel?  Would you be afraid?
    4. How do you think Mary felt when she found out she was going to be the mother of Jesus?
    5. How long was she going to be pregnant?  Do you think she could talk to people about what had happened to her?
    6. You might visit with a woman that you know who is pregnant, if your child has not really experienced this with you.
    7. Look at the calendar to see how long Mary had to wait for Christmas Day.
    8. You might make a 9-day calendar, representing the 9 months and use it as a mini-advent calendar, especially if your child is interested in Mary.  Each day you could do something that Mary might have done to get ready for her new baby: make diapers, find baby toys, a blanket for the baby, etc.

You can also include the story of the three wise men from the East

Text:      Matthew 2:1-12

Big Idea:  The birth of Jesus was for the whole world!

Activities:

  1. Look at a globe or map and figure out how far it is from Babylon to Bethlehem. Then figure out how long it might take them to make this journey if they were riding camels.
  2. You might go to the zoo and look at the camels. Talk about how you would ride one and how they would carry their gifts on the camels. If you don’t go to the zoo, then search the internet together to find great pictures and information about camels?
  3. Talk about the star that the wise men followed. Go look at the stars! Are any of them moving? What if you saw one that was moving! What would you do?  Why did these men follow the star so far? What did they believe?

—You might make a series of stars, graduating the size of the stars from small to large, one for each day until Christmas. Then you could hang or stick them on the ceiling, starting from the farthest corner of your house, but with the largest one above your nativity scene on the night before Christmas, to create your own journey of the magi.

  1. Of course, you can gather golden coins (get the $1 coins from the bank), perfume, and spices and make little presents out of them, like the wise men did.
  2. With older kids, you can talk about whether the men were kings or not, you can talk about astrology, and you can acknowledge that they probably showed up much later than Christmas Day (Mary and Joseph are in a house, and King Herod has all babies under the age of 2 put to death!), but that’s not necessary for younger kids.
  3. Be sure and ask the question, “Why did God want these people from a foreign country to know about Baby Jesus?”  That will give you the opportunity to go back to John 3:16 – For God So Loved the World!

Both of these stories contain much more that is important and interesting for adults, but don’t be tempted to overuse them with children.  You can use the age-appropriate ideas and help them learn some of the most important truths ever revealed.

Music:

I have two recommendations for you:

Star Carol (by Hutson and Burt). It’s a modern carol, very simple, but beautiful. Simon and Garfunkel did a nice version, but one of the most elegantly simple renditions is sung by Anna Maria Alberghetti. Here is a link to Youtube if you would like to listen to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPeG0fMqPvE .

Mary, Did You Know?  is another good, modern carol. There are lots of good versions, so search  ITunes or Youtube and pick the artist you like.

No Gift Compares is a beautiful carol written by my friend Gary Bruce. You can hear his performance of it at Oklahoma Christian a few days ago on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMBnoRVgzY4 . One of the early recordings on YouTube actually has the words to it.

I can’t wait to hear how it goes with your kids!

Next: For the Third Advent Week, we will focus on the Journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

(reposted from 2012)

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Bethlehem Is Dangerous!

Posted in Advent 2011, Christian Culture, tagged , on December 2, 2011| 1 Comment »

Don’t you love the Christmas season!  I love the colors and the music.  I love the school programs and the smell of Tannenbaum.  I love It’s A Wonderful Life and the Youtube videos of houses decorated for Christmas that play Mannheim Steamroller!

Everything good comes from God, so I truly believe that while most of the world has forgotten that Christmas is because of Christ, all of the goodness that belongs to this wonderful season of the year is because of His Goodness.

You know Sherrylee and I were just in Bethlehem.  That quaint little town of the song and of all the Christmas plays is now an embattled city, walled off by one side to contain the other, much like Berlin was. To get into Bethlehem, you have to show your passports to soldiers carrying deadly force.  You may be searched; your vehicle will certainly be searched for bombs that you might be bringing into the birthplace of Jesus to blow people up!

The Church of the Nativity is built over the traditional site of the birth of Jesus.  Nothing has been spared to decorate the lowly place of the manger. Gold, silver, jewels, incense, mosaics, paintings—and tourists! Most people wait hours in line to have a few seconds to kneel down before the silver star that marks the spot of Jesus’ birth.

Actually, the word pilgrim is used much more often in Bethlehem and the other “holy” sites in that part of the world than anywhere else we have been.  We Americans think of pilgrims as belonging mostly to our country’s early history and to Thanksgiving, but for centuries the word has been used to describe anyone traveling for religious reasons to what is considered a sacred site.

Christmas is an especially dangerous time in Bethlehem! If you wanted to create terror, the masses of pilgrims in Bethlehem are an easy target!

Perhaps Christmas is dangerous everywhere.  I was just thinking about all the reports of violence on Black Friday as people were shopping for Christmas presents. I was thinking about the thievery that happens daily at every department store where people walk out with unpaid Christmas gifts.

And what about just greed, which the Bible calls idolatry?  Most adults don’t wait for Christmas to get what they want! No, we adults just use this season to teach our children to want things and want more and want a lot!

Yes, Bethlehem is dangerous, and so is Christmas!

So, this year, whenever you hear the tune or sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” remember what that lowly manger can become if we forget about Jesus!

Next: Look for ideas to help your children prepare for Christmas!

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