it's my week off (we work 3 weeks on, one week off), and i've been kinda sick lately, so i've been spending a lot of time reading in my room. today while reading in my room, i heard a group of teachers, who are doing a week of training here, singing christmas carols as a choir. it's always so strange for me to combine tropical climates and christmas together. i've spent 2 christmases in tropical countries, and i am spending this advent in a tropical country, and it just feels... wrong. to echo bri's sentiments, i miss all familiarities of a north american christmas. to be perfectly honest, i really LIKE a lot of the things that most people hate about north american christmases: i LIKE going to the malls and seeing them all decorated, blasting Christmas carols (in small-town malls) and christmas songs (in big-city malls where mentioning the name of Christ is apparently offensive); i like bundling up in all my winter clothing and taking edmonton transit through the dark, snowy winter to said malls; i like receiving presents just as much as i like giving them; i LOVE wrapping presents (so much so that i try to convince anyone less keen on wrapping to let me do theirs for them); i like the lethargy of post-christmas dinner. i like watching movies with kelseydawn and knowing that she will inevitably fall asleep before the movie is half over. there are really only two things about christmas that i DON'T like:
1. real Christmas trees. some people would call a Christmas without a freshly-cut tree blasphemous. they say Christmas just isn't Christmas without the smell of a freshly-cut spruce (or is it pine? i don't even know). hmm. to this i say: save the tree, go buy an artificial one that'll last you 20+ years (like ours has), and just go outside and smell a still-living one. or just decorate one that lives outside, instead of cutting one down and bringing it inside. hmm?
2. i feel like i have to say this quietly: i don't know a whole lot about Jesus, but what i think i DO know about Him tells me that i don't know if He'd be down with all this obsession with Him and His birth. i know a lot of people think He'd be disgusted with all the materialism and stuff. but i think it goes further than that. i just feel like He'd feel a little, i don't know, embarrassed? who knows. maybe i've just been reading too much david james duncan.
13 years ago
2 comments:
I think I disagree with both your problems about christmas... The tree thing is relative I guess... but for me Id probably be quite hurt if we did not have a real pine or spruce for christmas.. I understand in and around these massive cities people cannot have real trees... Big cities have big problems... I love being the minority that doesn't really impact the majority..
As for your comments about the big to do about Jesus... interesting point of view... I guess if Jesus would be ashamed of what has become of Christmas.. with Coca Colas Santa and reindeers and presents galor... but all in all I think its up to yourself to celebrate the christmas that you believe was to be celebrated.. but wait to be honest about thoughts
well bye bye
lambertus..
I might be back in Etown on the 6th or 7th of January... we should hang out
i'd love to hang out!
as for the J.C. thing: i have a couple of friends who just hate having their birthdays celebrated. lewis carroll (alice in wonderland) was a "rememberer of birthdays," but raged out when people celebrated his. i just think J.C. would feel the same way. i still think Christmas is a good thing. but i think all the personal attention would make him uncomfortable (however, this is because i have a different view on J.C.'s divinity than you do).
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