I did watch the special, though in passing. The two-hour extravaganza around the forty-minute special really dragged on for me, though.
My favorite character: Charlie Brown. I've always felt like the kid to tries to fit in and just misses. (To a certain extent, I still feel that way.)
I would probably agree with Linus ... I find it extremely hard to sit still, which probably means that I need to do it more often.
This was a hard one for me to think about ... and then I finally came up with this one:
Growing up at home, in the pre-Internet era, we had a few Christmas music albums around that we played a lot during December. My dad had a bunch of sound equipment, including an old reel-to-reel audio tape player. Mostly, Dad used that for making recordings of various things. One of the audio tapes we'd listen to, though, was a long tape of Christmas music from a bunch of different albums. (I never knew where he got the albums; it was probably his version of a "mix tape").
The first album on the tape was the first Chipmunks Christmas album. This was exceedingly cool, because the tape deck had a setting that would allow you to play the tape at half speed ... which, it turns out, was exactly the right speed to hear the Chipmunks singing in their normal tone of voice, over-exaggerating the consonants, cutting off together, and so on. Imagine my delight to discover that David Seville was actually the voice of Alvin! :)
Back to the tape ... the last album on one side of the tape was the John Gary Christmas Album. I never knew the singer's name until I searched for it just now (and discovered, much to my surprise, that I could order a copy of the album from his estate). This song was the last song on the album, and also the very last song on the tape, which meant that when I heard him singing the high note at the end of the song, I had to stop whatever I was doing and walk over to the tape deck and be prepared to shut it off and reverse the tape to play the second side.
Wow, that brings back memories ...
I think a trip would be delightful. Where's the best geocaching? :) I'm not sure which of the options would be the most interesting.
Parenthood. Everything else that I've done in my life I've been trained for, in one way or another. Nothing trains you for parenthood. And when you make a mistake, it's your children who suffer. It's incredibly humbling.
I wish I could say there was something that I liked about preparing for Christmas. It's not that I hate anything about the preparations, but ... it's all work, one way or another.
Put it another way ... the part of prepating for Christmas that I like the most is the part where it's done.
Never been amazingly thrilled by gingerbread. My wife does tons of baking of Christmas cookies, but not gingerbread.
I have to get my checkbook balanced and charitable donations done. I'd really like to have all my grading done.
December is a hard month for me.
It's the last month of the semester, which is always hard no matter when it is. You have to get caught up on all the grading that you didn't do all term, plus you've got to get your final exams written, and then you have to grade all the exams. Of course, your students are just as stressed, dealing with your class as well as all the other ones they're taking.
And then it's Advent, which means a bunch of other things also need to be done. Christmas decorating. Christmas shopping. Lots of extra events to attend.
And, somehow, I'm expected to reflect the fact that this is a season of joy. Even if I don't feel particularly joy-filled.
Today, I had an interesting conversation with a friend. Amidst the wide-ranging conversation, I realized one slight error in my thinking. Advent isn't a season of joy: it's a season of expectation.
Think back to the first Christmas. Martial law has been imposed by a foreign invading army. The invaders have forced onerous travel on the population in order to fill their coffers. The religious leadership of the era seems more concerned about preserving their own positions than fighting for justice.
Looks pretty bleak to me.
And it's into that world that God makes his entrance. Granted, just about everyone ignored the entrance --- the only people who seemed to notice were the foster parents, some farm hands working the night shift, and a few foreign professors.
But God nonetheless made his entrance into this world --- a world that desperately needed redemption. And if most people weren't willing to acknowledge his entrance, that didn't change the mission.
Advent is a frustrating season for me. But I can take that frustration and channel it into expectation: looking for the One that will redeem all of this brokenness.
