Some Favorite Christmas Entertainments

Some things I eagerly anticipate every Christmas:

Die Hard
Never was I happier than last year, Christmas 2009, when I came home from doing our final Christmas Eve service (probably around 11:45pm) to find my family wrapping presents and just starting Die Hard in my living room. Nothing puts me in the mood more than hearing Run-DMC starting "Christmas in Hollis" as De'voreaux White exclaims, "This IS Christmas music!" And then, of course, brilliance ensues. Villains are villainous, heroes are heroic, and the Nakatomi building is saved. Just the way Jesus would do it.



"The Night of the Meek" - The Twilight Zone
As a child, we'd watch this episode of the classic TV show every year, as we tried to put needle and thread through popcorn...a tough job. In the episode, a laid-off (and alcoholic) department store Santa comes across a bag of gifts lying in an alley. Moved to give the gifts, he is as happy as he's ever been until they're gone. Depressed again, he slumps back into the alley...where elves and a sleigh await. They say that they've been waiting for him, and that they've got a lot more work to do. He is Santa Claus. The act of giving has, in fact, turned him into the ultimate gift giver! Just a hugely comforting childhood memory, and a reminder that a laid-off drunk can be the recipient of the greatest gift ever. You can watch the full episode HERE.

A Christmas Story
An obvious classic. And one I'm protective of. I watched this every year as a kid, sometimes more than once. I sort of hate the fact that everyone knows and loves this movie. It's mine! I feel the same way about Monty Python and the Holy Grail...I can't watch either with people who will quote along with them...they're sullying my childhood! But, whatever the viewing situation, nothing is better than Darren McGavin shouting, "Not a finger!"

A Christmas Memory
A story by Truman Capote, this is a sweet little Christmas tale. Capote narrates, and is wonderful. Again, just a warm memory from my own childhood. Mismatched misfits care deeply for one another, and commiserate over terrible Christmas presents: socks.

Bushfire Moon
Seen on U.S. TV as "Miracle Down Under," this is another little-seen classic from my childhood. Man, Christmas really brings back the childhood memories, doesn't it? Could you guess that this is a Christmas movie set in Australia? Where Christmas happens in the SUMMER? It's just crazy enough to involve dingos, an authentic yule log shipped all the way from England, and a full helping of familial warmth.

Year-End Lists
One of the most entertaining things about the Christmas season is reading other people's year-end lists. My favorite so far is The Cheapest Toys of 2011 (beware some light pottymouth). Enjoy!

Sheltering from Christmas Music
And finally, maybe my favorite entertainment of all comes the day after Christmas (Boxing Day to you Brits) when I can finally turn on some regular music and escape the repetitive droning that is Christmas music without being called an insufferable Scrooge. Happy Holidays!

What are your favorites?

Crushed: The (Totally Predictable) Story of Todd Marinovich

Todd Marinovich was more than a highly coveted quarterback recruit.  He was more than a highly-trained physical specimen. He was…a machine.

His father, Marv, had been a star football player at USC and had played in the NFL with the Oakland Raiders. As he played, he sometimes wondered how good he could have been if he’d been devoted to the sport from a younger age. When he had a son, he decided to find out.  The story of Todd Marinovich’s childhood is well-worn territory. Magazine articles from the time (like Sports Illustrated’s “Robo QB”) and the recent ESPN documentary The Marinovich Project detail  an unparalleled training regimen. During Todd’s first month of life, Marv instituted a stretching regimen, flexing his infant son’s hamstrings and quads. From the time Todd could hold things, he was holding a football. As soon as he could stand, he was standing in cleats. Everything, from his diet (no sugar or processed foods, period) to his time (no vacations or after-school outings with friends — his mother had to literally kidnap him for a weekend away…she knew if she asked Marv, he would have said no), was engineered by his father to give him the tools he would need to be a great quarterback.  (Many of the (sometimes grisly) details can be found in a Psychology Today blog post called “An Interesting Weekend on the Perils of Building Better Humans.”)

It worked…except that it didn’t. Marinovich began smoking marijuana in high school, saying that it, “gave me a buffer from a life that was too intense.” He went to USC as a blue-chip recruit and savior of the program. He was…except that he wasn’t. During his sophomore year he was benched for thinking he knew better than the coach…and for getting into alcohol and harder drugs. Marv is quoted in the documentary as saying that “when he was at home, things were pretty well structured,” lamenting the fact of his son’s rebellion at school. But in the next breath, he admits that things were “…maybe too structured.” Todd left school after his sophomore season, but was arrested on drug charges (cocaine this time) before the NFL draft. He was nonetheless drafted by the Los Angeles (at the time) Raiders. Drug problems continued to plague him. Howie Long, a then-teammate and current NFL analyst, suggests that “the pressure was on him from an early age, and I think that probably – in some ways – wore him down.”

Wore him down indeed. Inside of two seasons in the NFL, Marinovich was, by his own admission, “done with football.” The clearest thought in his head was a simple one: “I don’t want to be Todd Marinovich.” He “wanted to get as far away from football as possible.” The law brought only death (Romans 7:10). The regimen that was intended to make him a success only brought him torment and failure.  A reporter covering Todd’s high school career cautioned that “you can’t build a jailhouse of achievement for your son or daughter and not expect a really bad result.” The law, the rules, the requirement…these things are the jailhouse of achievement that either others construct for us or that we construct for ourselves. There is no way out of this jailhouse but through capital punishment.

Happily, Marv Marinovich is not the single-minded monster of destruction that the disembodied Law is. When Todd was in the throes of his drug addiction and needed help, help that ranged from being bailed out of jail to being physically held and comforted while going through withdrawals, Marv was there. Marv, in this story, was able, perhaps miraculously, to be Grace to his son, even after being the Law. Today, they have a loving and close relationship. Todd is now clean, sober, and an artist, whose work can be viewed at ToddMarinovich.com.

Hairy and Hasidic No More

Sean O'Neal is the Newswire editor for the A/V Club, one of my favorite websites.  He is, to me, the undisputed master of the comedic headline.  I guess it's not for nothing to note that the A/V Club was started and is a subsidiary of The Onion.  My all-time favorite headline of his is:  "Man, who hath conquered the steed and harnessed fire to curse the darkness, will make Rollercoaster Tycoon into a movie."  The accompanying article is hilarious, too.  The other day, he came up with another gem:  "Hairy Hasidic musician Matisyahu is no longer two of those things."  The article is about a recent announcement from the until-recently hairy and Hasidic "reggae-rappper."

On his website, Matisyahu wrote:

Sorry folks, all you get is me…no alias. When I started becoming religious 10 years ago it was a very natural and organic process. It was my choice. My journey to discover my roots and explore Jewish spirituality—not through books but through real life. At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity…to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission. 

Wow.  Some ripe theological fruit there.  For us, the most important line is that "in order to become a good person," Matisyahu felt he "needed rules -- lots of them --" or else he would "fall apart."  He says he approached this as his own choice.  In other words, he "chose" to submit himself to the Law (the rules) in order to try to become a good person.  So...did it work?  Well, a clean-shaven face and a renunciation of Hasidism seem to imply that it didn't.  More explicit is his statement that he "reclaiming" himself and trusting his own goodness.  I can't say that he's gone from the Law to the Gospel, necessarily, as he seems to still be relying on a goodness from within, but he does seem to have rejected the Law's ability to create goodness.

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”  But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.  Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.  I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.  For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.  So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death…(Romans 7:7-13)

The War on Christmas?

Stephen Colbert calls it "The Blitzkreig on Grinchitude", and it seems to come up every year.  Today I saw a Facebook friend had posted an extensive status update reminding everyone to say "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays."  Last year, it was the American Atheists putting up a billboard (at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel) saying that Christmas is a myth and that during this season, we should "celebrate reason," an admittedly clever play on the oft-recited Christian claim that Jesus is "the reason for the season."

This year, it's the Leesburg, Virginia (Loundon County) Courthouse skeletal Santa.  In brief, a couple of years ago, a nativity scene was removed from the courthouse lawn due to concern about the separation of church and state.  A law was passed forbidding similar displays on the lawn.  However, that law was repealed, and a new rule was put in place: the first ten displays erected could stand throughout the holiday season, first come, first served.  Then this happened.  A skeleton, dressed as St. Nick, hung on a cross.  Yikes.  Put up by a local mother and son, the display was supposed to bring attention to how commercialism and materialism are "killing the peace, love, joy and kindness that is supposed to be prevalent in the holiday season."  The edifice was knocked over at some point, and lay on the ground for several hours before being collected.  The mother and son plan to re-erect their display soon.

Now, I'm no stick-in-the-mud.  Seriously.  I think this is hilarious:

But something about this display rubs me the wrong way, and I think it's the use of the cross.  I'm reminded of the atheistic/scientific (I guess) response to the Jesus fish that was once to prevalent on cars:  the fish with legs, which was, perhaps predictably, followed quickly by the more adversarial Jesus-fish-EATING-the-fish-with-legs.  How does the use of the cross, the most sacred of the Christian symbols (and the most inscrutable to atheists), advance the message of anti-materialism and pro-peace, -joy, and -love?  It seems that this mother and son are being a little disingenuous in claiming a non-antagonistic message here.  I don't really get their message at all, in fact.  Santa should be crucified as a symbol of materialism?  Talk about misinterpreting the cross...

So what of the war on Christmas?  The Blitzkreig on Grinchitude?  For me, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of the one who came to die for my sins, to reconcile me to God.  Christmas has come to mean many things to many people...Christians themselves borrowed pagan holidays for this and many other religious observances.  I believe things that other people think make me a fool.  People believe things that I think make them fools.  But the Bible (to use a debatably authoritative source!)  said that God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27).  As ever, I find myself wishing that people could just have a sense of humor about all of this and be willing to admit that they might be fools, like John Allen Paulos and the creators of Drop Dead Gorgeous (the source of the above clip) and unlike Christoper Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and many of the residents of Leesburg, Virginia.

The Belle Brigade Tries to Check Out

This is The Belle Brigade performing their very catchy song "Losers."  The first lines really caught me:

There will always be someone better than you. Even if you're the best. So let's stop the competition now. Or we will both be losers.  And I'm ashamed I ever tried to be higher than the rest.  But brother I am not alone. We've all tried to be on top of the world somehow,'cause we have all been losers.

It's also got a cool modern-Kingston-Trio vibe.  The song seems to be about the futility of attempting to live up to the inevitable comparisons and competitions of human life; the Law.  It's also a sad-but-true statement about the universality of human pain and struggle.  But, sadly and perhaps predictably, The Belle Brigade's solution left me a little cold:

So I wanna make it clear now.  I wanna make it known.  That I don't care about any of that [expletive] no more.  Don't care about being a winner.  Or being smooth with women.  Or going out on Fridays.  Being the life of parties.  No, no more, no.

So, the answer to the pressures of life is to...check out?  How exactly does one do that?  Is a Conan-sponsored declaration good enough?  I wish I could just declare myself immune from the Law's demand:  I will NOT feel that I have to be a better father than I am.  I will NOT let others' expectations rule (and subsequently destroy) my life.  I will NOT worry that I am about to be discovered as the fraud I fear I am.

Sadly, the Law's demands on us weigh heavily whether we accept them or not.  Whether we acknowledge them or not.  Whether we believe in them or not. I want to be a winner.  I want to be smooth with women.  I want to go out on Fridays.  I'm desperate to be the life of parties.

The Law is the terrible windstorm that threatens to blow our house down.  Throwing open the door and shouting, "You will NOT destroy my house!" is not a winning strategy.  Best to get a new house; ideally, one with many rooms (John 14:2).

Proofs for God...and Barbarella

I recently re-read John Allen Aaulos' book, and it reminded me of something that has come to my mind a lot recently, whether it's been through conversations I've had, articles I've read, or remembering watching Richard Dawkins on The Colbert Report. People seem very interested in the idea that God may (or may not) actually exist! Scientists (like Dawkins, a biologist) and mathematicians, like Paulos (pictured right...and looking AWESOME) seem caught up in an almost-Christian evangelical fervor: the message they have come to preach is that there is no God, and they preach their gospel on the same street corners and from the same soap boxes from which we preach our Gospel.

In fairness to Paulos, I should separate his work from that of Dawkins and the like-minded Christopher Hitchens, who seem to be angered by the fact that so many people claim to believe in God. To their mind, "God" is a mass delusion perpetrated on humanity by those who would wish to subdue it. Paulos, on the other hand, has written a very light-hearted book that I actually recommend. It's called Irreligion, and refutes (to the extent that one can refute such things) the common logical arguments for the existence of God. Maybe the most common argument for the existence of God is the so-called "Argument from Complexity." It goes like this: Look at the world, how complex and beautiful it is! This cannot have been the product of random chance. Therefore, there must be a Creator who is ultimately complex, and that Creator is God." Paulos simply asks, "If the creator is so complex, must not he have had a creator? If there is a cause, that cause must have a cause."

I only bring up Paulos' book and his arguments because I have found such arguments fascinating. I have never felt that my faith was challenged by arguments against the existence of God, something I never felt I could (or had to) prove. I'm reminded of the story of Jesus' interaction with the woman at the well in John 4. After a profound interaction with Jesus, the woman goes back to her town and tells the people there, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever did." This woman felt herself so profoundly described by Jesus that she was willing to stake her life on the things that he said. I feel the same way.

Jesus (and the Biblical writers) so accurately describe and diagnose my life, down to the fact that I so often do the very thing I wish I wouldn't do, and vice versa, that I naturally put credence to their other words, including their descriptions and assertions of the existence of God. In the end, though, I'm not too naive to admit that I need God to exist. The need I feel to strive (the Army's "Be all you can be") must come from somewhere! Of course, this is not a rhetorically strong argument. It is undeniable, though, that despite the need to be all I can be, I feel that I am not. I need the God described by Jesus and the Bible, who sent an envoy to me, to be all I could have been, in my place.

Ted Turner famously called Christianity "a crutch." I think it's funny...Christianity never claimed to be anything else. That's the thing that Dawkins, Hitchens, and Paulos don't understand. They're convinced that humanity just needs to be told to throw the crutch away. "You can walk," they say. "Stop letting this 'God' nonsense hold you back!" Their vision of humankind is one of strength, self-sufficiency, and power. They don't have an answer for people's weaknesses, insufficiencies, and fear. These are the people Christianity speaks to. If Ted Turner claims that Christianity is a crutch, Christ affirmed it! It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Christianity is not for the strong and wise, but for the weak and foolish, like you and me. After all, we all have our crutches...right Ted?

Frasier Crane and the Illusion of Control

The final installment in our reviews of the Sunday Evening Discussion, The Gospel According to Frasier!  Sunday Evening Discussion will be on hiatus until the new year.

In the final season episode "Murder Most Maris," Niles' (David Hyde Pierce) ex-wife is accused of murder. Niles is implicated as a possible accessory, for lending her an antique crossbow, which became the murder weapon. His life swirling out of control, Niles "chooses" to be calm. Martin (John Mahoney), the Crane boys' father, observes, "Wow! He's really holding up well!" "A little too well," Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) retorts. "I'm starting to fear that he's not dealing with his emotions at all!" Martin says, "Right. That's the whole secret to holding up."

This exchange illustrates a disconnect that people, and Christians, experience. What is the difference between what is on our outsides and what is on our insides? What is real? Which is more powerful? As Martin suggests, we often think of obscuring what's really going on as a skill. The grieving mother who gets right back to work, or the mourning father who never cries. This is called, in some circles, "strength." But is this kind of strength worth anything?

As "Murder Most Maris" continues, Niles' life becomes more and more unbearable, and he becomes more and more robotic in his insistence that everything is fine. Finally, he goes to Cafe Nervosa (the inevitable coffee shop where everyone is always hanging out) with Roz (Peri Gilpin) and asks for a straw, only to be told that Roz just got the last one. Here's what happens:

So you see the point: whatever's underneath will eventually come out. The core will come to the surface. The reason we find The Stepford Wives so creepy is that buried emotions are unnatural. This is the illusion of self-control. We tell ourselves that people like Niles are exhibiting great self-control. Martin certainly thinks so. But he's not actually controlling his discomfort and stress, he's simply hiding it. We find that he's only acting calm, cool, and collected. And no one can hide their true selves forever. We put a smile on our faces and say, "I'm happy." But isn't it well-known that clown make-up hides despondence?

Christians often feel it necessary to hide their insides (their sinfulness) from each other, fearing that they'll be revealed to be lagging behind on the great path to righteousness. However, and of course, God looks on the heart. And as we say all the time, it's a good thing that Jesus came for sinners, and not for the righteous! It's a good thing that he came for those of us who can't handle our lives, rather than for those of us who can. The Gospel is good news when we find ourselves exposed, as Niles does, by situations beyond our illusions of control.