Advent-agious.

I'm sitting here at the desk in my office.  I'm listening to the Home Alone soundtrack pour through my little computer speakers.  and have yourself a merry little.....I'll have a blue....I have no gifts to bring bahrumpbhabumbum....

Did you know that this Sunday is the beginning of the season known as Advent?  Thats the Christmas season-a time when we are preparing our hearts for the arrival of God on earth.  This didn't mean much to me when I was a child.  I used to see those funny calendars that people sold as kind of silly.  Why do we have to open that little paper door?  If we're going to buy chocolate, couldn't we get it in smaller packaging? 

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  

The whole Christmas thing is incredibly fascinating.  The way it has evolved from the very beginnings of the early church.  I can't think of much else in our culture that is so stable as the Christmas season, and probably won't change much for awhile.  It's far too lucrative.  Can you imagine not giving/getting presents on Christmas morning?  That is Three King's Day in other cultures.  The big gift giving day being in early January.  Can you imagine?  Can you picture a Santa Claus in Sweeden wearing a blue robe instead of a red suit? It must be a burden to have to change clothes as he passes from country to country-and so cold!

Christmas is a holiday that began from the birth of a guy in the mideast sometime in August or maybe March or who knows-somewhere around 6 B.C.....or who knows?  And then a few hundred years go by, and this little birthday is slowly beginning to be celebrated on the Winter Solstice. The holiday that a bunch of folks used to sacrifice goats and such to a god named Yule.  Oh yeah-you've heard of Yule-tide carols.  The yule-log.  I'm not sure what thats all about, except I think it has something to do with a goat sacrificing god Yule.  

So then an epoch passes and you get a little poem called "The Night Before Christmas."  This pretty much created the character of Santa Claus in our culture-along with the drawings of Thomas Nast and Coca-Cola.  Now we have the "War on Christmas."  Why is that?  Do we suspect that Santa has a cache of weapons of mass destruction up at the North Pole?  I say we leave the man alone so he can go back to giving me coal. 

What's really impressive about Christmas is that we love it so much.  We love it for everything that it is.  We love the way it makes us feel inside.  And the way it makes us feel when we tune into the cheesy Christmas music playing spot on the radio is completely false.  It is not Christmas at all. 

I hate the phrase "Jesus is the reason for the Season." 

We should completely get rid of all trite sayings like this and all hand motions to songs. I will not lift my hands and spin around. 

But I will say this-

That what Christmas is, what it really is, is something so deep and mysterious that I can't get my head around it.  If there were ever a moment of magic in this rational world, then that was it.  The day that God Himself became a pooping baby boy.  Can you imagine being a deity and then trading it in for being a person?  The answer is no.  You cannot.  Can you remember back to your Christmas' as a kid?  When you 11, 12, 13?  Could you trade that time with your family-as imperfect as they are-to go and live in an orphanage during Christmas?  I can still get inside of my adolescent brain and I can't imagine anything worse than that.  It would be awful.  

And here is this guy whom we've never met making himself a baby.  It is comedy and it is tragedy.  

in Life of Pi,  Piscine is a young boy from India whose father runs a zoo. This is the way the character of Pi relates to this news: 

"And what a story.  The first thing that drew me in was disbelief.  What?  Humanity sins but it's God's Son who pays the price?  I tried to imagine Father saying to me, "Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas.  Yesterday another one killed a black buck.  Last week two of them ate the camel.  The week before it was painted storks and grey herons.  And who's to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti?  The situation has become intolerable.  Something must be done.  I have decided the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them." 

Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do.  Give me a moment to wash up."  

"Hallelujah, my son." 

"Hallelujah, Father."

Don't you see it?  This world is crazy.  There is no sense in God being with us.  Walking with us.  Eating with us.  Everything is turned upside down when this happens, don't you think? Absurd. 

So if you get that little warm fuzzy when you think about Christmas this month, then I submit that it is no accident.  Everything about Christmas has been built upon and painted over to where we can hardly see why its such a big freaking deal in the first place.  But when magic like that happens-real and true and bonifide magic occurs, its going to last for a long time.  There are still traces of it in the air.  We feel it and breath it and share it all through out the season of Advent.  

God moved into the neighborhood?  

It's ridiculous. It's amazing. 

The Pursuit of Happyness and the Sweat of the Season

I saw Will Smith's "The Pursuit of Happyness" last night, and I have to say that this movie almost crushed my fragile soul into oblivion. I'm talking about two full hours of heartache and infinite saddness, until the very end. The film was well cast, acted and I believe the theater was seriously caught up in the story. At the end, we all started applauding and I suggested that we all sing a song together or something to display the commradiere that we all seemed to share. Movies like this remind me that I need to get out college.

I'm sitting in a Jittery Joe's and I can feel the sweat running down my back. This is December 23rd! It is the height of winter, and its 65 degrees outside. You don't wan to be near a big window because your skin and spirit will begin to melt similtaniously. I am a man that was born for cold weather and at the very least, more than two seasons per year. Either globalwarming is absolutely true (which I suspect) or the earth is warming itself at a torrid pace. If the latter is the case, then I was cursed to be born in the wrong millinium. If its the former, then I think I have found my life calling. We've got to patch some holes in the sky soon, or we're all going to wane away like candles.

Christmas Is a Blanket of Magic

Christmas is beginning to wrap his arms around me. I know of very few cold souls who do not feel the magic of this season. Everyone swears that there is "something in the air". While I become immeshed in the harsh glow of this computer screen at this familiar coffee house, I have yet to feel the tug of Cindy Lou Who on my heart strings. I know that this will soon change.

My lack of a traditional family leads me to form my own traditions. A couple of my friends go to Catholic mass every Christmas Eve at midnight. We come back to Jay's house and we sit around and laugh at the year gone by as we kick back a few beers. I'm not Catholic, but there is something about this little ritual that pulls my thoughts toward the sacred and away from the commercials. It beckons me into the magic. Every year, when I'm driving to my parents house at four AM on Christmas morning, I look out into the stillness and my wrestling soul and heart grows quiet. Suddenly, there is peace on earth.

A few weeks ago, I watched "Charlie Brown Christmas" for the first time since I was a little kid. The movie was made in the 1960's, yet Charlie Brown is distraught at the commercialization of Christmas. I had to laugh, because I imagine the holiday's of those years to be quaint and traditional. There must have still been sleigh bells and families would deck the halls. I suspect that we are in a perennial state of disgruntlement over the situation.

Sometimes I just need to breathe. I recently read about a study of 100 elderly people that were asked if they could change anything about their lives. The two consistent answers were that they wish they had risked more and reflected more. I do not believe that there has ever been a time in history where people were not busy. I'm going to take a moment and reflect on the only life I'll ever get to enjoy, and I'm going to smile at the magic that is falling on the earth like a blanket as we come towards Christmas.