Humility

This Thanksgiving weekend, I took a brief little road trip with Grandaddy, Mom, Dad, and my sister to Erin, TN.  This was the second Thanksgiving without my Granny (mom's side) and it's been over five without my Grandmother (Dad's side).  We explored some sites of historical significance to our family.  Pictured here is the cabin where my great-great grandmother (Grandaddy's granny) once lived:

It's even more rustic on the inside than this picture might suggest.  It's got about three rooms and the stable in the rear.  Less than a mile up the hill from the cabin is the old family cemetery which contains about five graves, one of them being a twelve-year-old boy who died in the 1950s and the other holding the body of my great-great-great grandmother who was born in the 1830s, lived through the Civil War, and died in the 1890s.

I've never had any interest in family genealogy; my brain has a hard time visualizing relatives who I never had the pleasure of knowing in life.  It is very hard for me to imagine my grandparents being young and having grandparents of their own.  But, where I am, they once were.  It's strange to take a few minutes and walk the same places where they used to walk years ago.  I can't imagine living in a three room cabin that, in spite of its rickety appearance, has apparently withstood over a century of wear by the natural world.

Seeing places like this remind me of how my family was able to make due with so little for so many years.  People like my grandaddy were born into humble circumstances, grew up in tiny towns working humble jobs, and then got drafted into the armed services during World War II which took them to some of the most exotic places on earth before they even turned twenty-one.  When their service was over, they returned home to places like Erin and picked up with real-life.  Much of my family moved to Detroit to get work in the auto industry, build families, and then retired back to their Tennessee hometowns to live out their golden years.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to grow up in rural Tennessee during the 1800s or the early 1900s, but my family did it for generations.  They didn't have a lot of possessions, but they did have each other and faith in God, and that was enough.  Children died young and those who survived had to grow up fast.  When you have childhood so brief, I guess it only makes sense that it's important to hold onto those memories and pass them onto future generations.  Soaking in such sights, I'm humbled to the point that I never have any words of insight to add.  But it certainly makes me thankful for all that I have in life and all that has come before me to make me into the person I am today.

This Is (or is it Was?) Halloween!

I had a really fun month of October!  Seeing as how most of my recent posts have tended to be serious and melancholy, I thought it might be fun just to do a little "how I spent my free time" update.  October is pretty awesome because it is the quintessential "Autumn" month, starting out with colorful, falling leaves and ending with the great celebration of candy, costumes, and creative spookiness that is Halloween!

The real highlight was a couple of weekends ago when I got an opportunity to travel back down to Tennessee and preach a sermon at the church my Grandaddy has attended for the past thirty years.  The church has been without a pastor for a few weeks, so I tried to provide them with an encouraging yet challenging message from Paul's parting words in 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28. Although I don't think I did justice to the full passage (I put the focus on verses 12-18... especially verse 18), I do hope that I was faithful to God and edifying to the congregation in the things that I did say about what the text demands of us.

I also got to spend that weekend with a dear friend who I hadn't seen for over four years.  My sister came home from college too, which made the days extra awesome.  We planned on watching The Nightmare Before Christmas (DVD borrowed from my good buddy Derek), but we simply waited too late and didn't have the energy to finish it.  We did, however, have time to watch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer "musical episode" (speaking as a new initiate to the franchise, it was alright but it needed more vampire slaying, IMO) and the Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space TV special.  Ah... good stuff.

I had never seen The Invisible Man (1933) film, so I was glad to pick up that particular volume of Universal's Monsters Legacy Collection once I got back to Louisville for a good price.  I've been collecting those classic monster collections over the last couple of years, and I really like them because they include the whole series of films that Universal made related to the featured monster with some very well-done bonus content.  But regarding The Invisible Man, I was REALLY impressed with the cinematography and pacing of the film.  The visual effects are ingenious and very impressive to watch even today.  I didn't even know that Claude Rains (probably best known as Louie from Casablanca) had played the part of the title character, but given the fact that the viewer never even sees his face until the last few seconds of the movie, he did a fantastic job with is role.  I think there are some important moral and theological ramifications raised by the movie's themes, but I'll save that for a future reflection.  And because the Legacy Collections have an impressive list of extras, I've still got four more sequels to enjoy later, the first of which stars Vincent Price taking up the mantle left behind by Rains.

 I didn't have any intentions of making a Halloween costume this year (I mean, I am 29-years-old for goodness sake), but my friend Joseph and I had a serendipitous moment of inspiration after watching Monday Night Football.  He said I ought to dress up as "the ghost from Charlie Brown" but I misheard him as saying "the ghost of Charlie Brown."  The wheels got turning in our brains, and after a midnight run to Wal-Mart we had most of the materials we needed to make the crazy idea into reality.

Here is the concept art:

And here's what we ended up with:

I think the levitating Snoopy ghost on a leash is was really made the ensemble complete.

And, no, we didn't go around hitting up houses for candy, in case you were wondering!  Joseph & Emily's sons Austin and David did all the Trick-or-Treating as a Ninja Turtle and a knight, respectively.  However, Joseph and I did provide some extra style for the neighborhood with our ghostly get-ups.

Earlier in the month, I decorated my room with some vintage Ninja Turtles decorations I found at a local thrift store for a mere $3:

This Pirate Splinter next to the "rusty" Mouser is my favorite of the whole bunch!

Halloween is an awesome holiday when it's celebrated right!

There were a number of other great memories I have of October '12 (like getting recruited to be a judge in a bake-off and getting to talk to Dr. David Dockery at the Louisville Union University Alumni reunion), but this post has gone on long enough.  Now it's November's time (too bad all the stores just want to get Christmas season started ASAP) and the good news is that Wreck-It-Ralph is hitting theaters this weekend!

And I still need to get around to watching The Nightmare Before Christmas before I have to get that DVD back to Derek.

Under-Rated Christmas Specials!

Oh sure, everybody loves Rudolph, Frosty, Charlie Brown, and Tim Allen when they are played constantly on TV in December, but here are some other equally worthy classics that don't seem to get played on TV as much as they deserve.

1. Claymation ChristmasWill Vinton's masterpiece of visuals and sound! My personal favorites are the "We Three Kings" sung by camels with "soul," and the California Raisans' big finale of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.




2. Ernest Saves Christmas
Some of Jim Varney's best work!


3. Pluto's Christmas TreeEverybody remebers Mickey's Christmas Carol but few can recall this classic by name. Chip n' Dale sneak into Mickey's house and give Pluto a dose of Christ-"mess."


4. Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas
More magic from Jim Henson's hey-day!


5. A Garfield Christmas SpecialHis Halloween Special is also great!

Happy Turkey Day!

Poor kid... *shudder*

Blast from the Reformation-Ween Day Past!

Union University: Hallowed Reformation-Ween Day 2004


Here's a little taste of a video project Joseph Gould and I put together way back in our waning days of Union University life. Joseph has the full version (but can't find it... DOH!). I went around interviewing people about how much they knew about the Reformation and whether Christians should embrace some of the Halloween traditions. The responses were varied and (for the most part) entertaining.

The microphone was in my tail. Seriously.

And this video also reveals my repressed obsession with the cultural legacy of Desiderius Erasmus.

Special Thanks to the ever-benevolent Kristina Michael and the ever-whimsical Willie George for being good sports for this interview!

Santa Claus and the Christmas Myth

When I was about 13-years-old, I realized that Santa Claus wasn’t real. Imagine my surprise when about 3 years ago, I realized that he was.

Upon becoming a teenager, I first became conscious that things which have basis solely in tradition were foolish and not worth believing in or preserving. Mythological stories like a man named Santa Claus who leaves presents for children every Christmas Eve were not “real” because my definition of reality was dependent only upon things that have physical matter. I trust my mental prowess must have common to most young philosophers my age. Because we realized the impossibility of one man to fly around the world in a sleigh pulled by 8 tiny reindeer (and Rudolph on the foggy nights), we philosophers concluded that Santa Claus or any other fantastic idea of Christmas magic or myths is not a tradition worth believing in.

I grant that the evidence accumulated against Santa Claus’ existence cannot be ignored. There are confirmed accounts of houses that lack presents on Christmas morning (not even a lump of coal). There are eyewitness reports that the job of Mr. Claus has been filled by some well-meaning parents who don’t even bother wearing a red suit or cap whilst practicing their deception. Most parents will probably admit that Santa not only leaves presents under the tree, but also sales receipts in their wallets. But I believe it is folly to conclude that Santa Claus does not exist based upon the fact that he is not acknowledged in some homes.

In 1897, a little girl named Virginia wrote to the editor of the New York Sun asking if it was reasonable to believe in Santa Claus when all her friends told her it was foolish to do so. The editor responded by writing that indeed it was not only tolerable to believe in Santa Claus but encouraged her to do so. He explained that her friends had been “affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.” The same words could have easily come out of the mouth of C. S. Lewis, who was fond of mythology even before he ever came to faith in Christ or wrote his Narnia books. But as a young man, Lewis had once renounced any notions of faith or mythology in favor of atheism, skepticism, and materialism. Many years later, in Surprised by Joy, he reflected upon this time of his life and remarked: “Nearly all that I loved [poetry, beauty, mythology] I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I wanted to be real, I thought grim and meaningless.”

C. S. Lewis the atheist wanted to believe in myth and meaning, but he couldn’t because he thought that reality must be defined in terms of the physical or material alone. Myth is imaginary and is therefore not “real” as he then understood it. Lewis sought for meaning and beauty, but his struggle was only resolved when he was persuaded that Christianity was the one true myth. Indeed, it was “the true myth to which all the others were pointing,” and it alone “was a faith grounded in history.”

As I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and then watched the new movie, I was struck by the scene where the professor rebukes the skepticism of the older children who disbelieve their little sister’s claim that she visited Narnia. Alas, Peter and Susan had unconsciously bought into the secular ideas of skepticism which the editor of The New York Sun warned young Virginia about. I think most children fall prey to this skepticism around the teenage years due to the secular rationalism that says that whatever forces or beings that cannot be seen must not be real or worthy of admiration. I have many brothers and sisters in Christ who do not believe in the myth of St. Nicholas; some even accuse it of being the root of the greed and materialism that might be considered a 21st century version of Turkish delight. Some say that Santa Claus, Christmas lights, and Christmas presents distract from Jesus’ glory, and I doubt if anything will alter their thinking.

But the myth of Christmas tradition and the true meaning behind Christmas need not be in opposition to each other. I recognize that difference between the Incarnation of the Son of God and the myth of St. Nicholas. The gospel of the Christian faith has its basis in fact (making it the true myth), while the contemporary myth of Santa Claus has its basis primarily in tradition. The myth of Christmas can be traced to the charity of a real bishop who gave money to young women to aid them in marriage. His example reminds us of God the Father’s gracious gift of His invaluable Son to us when we did not deserve Him. As we celebrate the spirit of Christmas by continuing the example of St. Nicholas, we remember that any gifts we receive are but reflections of the Greatest Gift we mercifully received from the Great Giver. Christmas presents given to us in the name of Santa Claus are valuable only so long as they help us in our gratitude to the Father and our joy in the Son. If they become the chief end of the holiday, then the Christmas myth becomes meaningless and idolatrous. But when the Christmas myth points us to the True Myth, then we can rejoice in the truth while being appreciative of the traditions that supplement but never supersede it.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!