What to do about Santa Claus??

Back when I was growing up in the 1960s, Santa Claus was a fact of life. Nearly everyone who was civilized made Santa a part of their Christmas. Of course there were some we knew about, mostly Jehovah’s Witnesses who didn’t celebrate or acknowledge Christmas but everyone knew they were going to hell anyway.

As time passed many in the evangelical community took a hard look at the tradition of Santa Claus and concluded that including a mythological being (based on a historical figure) with immense magic like power robbed God of the glory that was His in the sending of His Son. I myself said on many occasions that how can we tell our children that Jesus is real and Santa is real too, but then admit to them as they grow up that Santa is about as real as professional wrestling. Doing that we have in essence practiced deception.

A few years ago I definitely took the hard-line approach against the inclusion of Santa. I took it in my own mind but acquiesced due to a long-standing tradition in my wife’s family. When my own children asked if Santa was real we told them the truth. No he is not real. All those presents are from us. Rather than being disappointed, my children both smiled and said thank you for all the presents. I don’t believe their enjoyment of Christmas has in any way been diminished by their knowing the truth.

When word spread that my children no longer believed in Santa Claus, it was met by a measured amount of hostility from some of our family (not all I wish to be careful to point out.) We were told that if our kids spilled the beans to their kids, it would be on. We were astounded.

I think that in some cases the Santa Claus tradition is more important to the parents than to the children. Like I said, my own children were not disappointed at all. You can go to the mall and see tons of families with children so young that they don’t have a clue what’s going on, waiting in line to see Santa.  Most of time it ends with a crying child. Let’s face it, while Santa might look warm, friendly, and inviting to an adult, he might look pretty scary to a small child that isn’t used to the image of Santa and what he represents.

I have to admit, my thinking has mellowed somewhat. I don’t think celebrating Christmas with the inclusion of Santa Claus necessarily causes permanent and lasting harm to a child. Nor do I think it is necessarily wrong in all cases. Like I said, when I was growing up Santa was just about universally a part of everyone’s Christmas. Looking forward I know many Christians who are deeply committed to serve the cause of Christ who came from that same tradition.

So my opposition to Santa is essentially this: I prefer to keep Christ the central (and only) focus of the day we have set aside to celebrate as His birthday. I would have no problem with having a separate day to deal with the things of Santa Claus. Ironically, many of the traditions we celebrate as Christmas had their roots in pagan solstice holidays. Santa Claus in many ways has a more Christian pedigree than Christmas itself.

Do I condemn families who cling tenaciously to the tradition of Santa Claus? Absolutely not!! I even have a cousin who is a real bearded Santa that I am very proud of. I simply believe that for our family, it is better not to include Santa. Other families should examine their conscious and determine if they feel free in their Christian liberty to include Santa or not include him.

And finally, we have instructed our children not to say anything to any other children. We have instructed them emphatically and often. We truly do not desire to spoil it for anyone who is a Santa Claus tradition practitioner.

Merry Christmas and War Eagle!!!

 

A Picture of Glory

A local church is in the midst of a leadership crisis. Since I am a member of a church that suffered a bitter split four years ago I can remember all the sleepless nights and all the worry and anxiety that came along with it. God worked it out for good though, as our church righted herself, called a strong pastor and is in better shape than ever. I give God all the glory!!!

Having been through the turmoil I am burdened for this church and am going to commit to pray for them. While the issues my church faced were spread through whispers and gossip in the community, this church is much bigger than mine and their issues have caught the eye of the local media, sadly.

Just this morning an article appeared in The Montgomery Advertiser concerning the problems. Since the Advertiser allows readers to make comments I read a few of those too. But I was dumbfounded and profoundly saddened when I read this one:

Frazer is one of the churches that cater to non-Whites by having services in other languages and teaching English to help water down the influence of Whites in this town and country. Churches are supposed to ministry to their communities – not destroy them by encouraging race-mixing.

What kind of person could have possibly made a remark of that nature? A comment so vile and divisive that it is right out of the Jim Crow south of 60 years ago.

I doubt the writer of this evil statement will ever read my words but if they did here is what I would like to say to them. Read the scripture and know that it is the Word of an Almighty God. John under the influence of the Holy Spirit writes in Revelation 7:9-12:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and {all} tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches {were} in their hands;

and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

And all the angels were standing around the throne and {around} the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,

saying, “Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might, {be} to our God forever and ever. Amen.”

Isn’t that a beautiful picture!!! People of every tribe, tongue, and nation, bowing together in perfect obedience to worship God!!! And having been cleansed of our sin once and for all, we can gaze at our brothers and sisters through clean and untainted eyes and see only a fellow saint.

I want to be brutally honest here. I have struggled with prejudice in the past and still do to some extent. That’s due to being brought up in the South during the time of integration, but mostly from my own sin nature. But God in his grace has allowed me to overcome much of that, albeit not perfectly.

A few years ago we attended a birthday party for one of my children’s friends and I happened to notice that my wife (a Caucasian lady) was sitting on the sofa with a Hispanic lady, and African-American lady, and an Asian lady. The remarkable thing about this is they were all laughing and giggling together in perfect fellowship with one another, unaware of the picture of glory they were representing.

In May 2008, God gave me another glimpse of glory. I went on a mission trip to Japan and was tremendously blessed to sing Amazing Grace in English along with some local Christians who were singing it in Japanese. (Men of every tribe, tongue, and nation.)

If we having true saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, one day we will stand with the saints in glory, men and women of every tribe, tongue, and nation, around the throne, divided no more, but washed clean by the blood of the lamb. We will be able to see each other as God sees us, without prejudice, without preconceived notions, and without the blemish of sin coloring our thoughts and deeds. What a glorious day that will be!!! Maranatha!!!!

To the person who wrote those horrible remarks I pity you. I pray that God lifts the veil that Satan has put over your eyes so that you may see that our God is the God of all races. We will worship together in glory. It cannot be wrong to worship Him together on earth. In fact, it may be wrong not to. And I pray that this local church is blessed as much as God blessed our church in the midst of troubles.

My Daughter’s Latest Obsession

My daughter turned nine back in September. She’s very normal by anyone’s definition. She loves her friends. She loves all the TV shows that her friends love. She is girly. She likes clothes. She likes her pet chihuahua Peanut.

But she also has some not quite so normal interests for a nine-year old girl.  A few weekends ago we were in Georgia for a family reunion. The morning of the reunion, while my wife was getting ready I flipped through the channels and found some History Channel program about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Next thing I know she was sitting on the floor in front of the TV just glued to it.

In the weeks since, I have answered tons of questions about it. She developed a fascination for Mrs. Kennedy and has asked what happened to the pink dress and pillbox hat? (The dress is in the National Archives; the pillbox hat is not.) Who shot him? (Lee Harvey Oswald did, acting alone. Sorry but the simplest answer is usually right. I don’t smell a conspiracy at all.) Was President Kennedy a good president? (That all depends on who you ask but on the whole I think he was). Why did Jack Ruby shoot Oswald? (Not sure anyone knows.) Is Jackie still living? (No she died back in the 1990s.) Where was he shot from? (The sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.)

In the conversation she also became aware of something known as the Zapruder film, a home movie which shows the fatal head shot in graphic detail. Naturally she wanted to see it.  It’s a part of history and so many of our young people grow up ignorant of  our history, our triumphs and our tragedies. After thinking about it, we watched the video. That brought up more questions. What was Jackie trying to do when it looked like she climbed onto the back of the limo. (Retrieving pieces of his skull.) Had he already been shot when he grabbed his neck? (Yes I think so.) Did Jackie get hit by a bullet? (No. Only President Kennedy and Governor Connally were hit. Jackie and Nellie Connally were not hit.)

I know that a nine-year old girl being interested in something like the JFK assassination might seem a little strange, but honestly I’m proud of my daughter. I’m thrilled that she realizes that much came before her and wants to know about it. I plan on answering all the questions she has.

My Thoughts on Halloween

Halloween is a mostly secular holiday that has rather obscure origins. It is a strange amalgam of the pagan Celtic day Samhain and the Christian All Saint’s Day. As it exists today it is neither particularly pagan and certainly not Christian. It is a largely secular celebration that gives retail outlets another opportunity to make money. That is my opinion.

As a child growing up, Halloween meant dressing up in a mask or a costume and going from house to house in the neighborhood collecting candy. We only went to houses where we knew the people. We were encouraged to ALWAYS WITHOUT FAIL remember to say “Thank you.”

If you went trick or treating several years in a row you learned that some people always gave out the same treats, year after year. One house always had popcorn in a small brown paper bag with the top neatly folded and stapled twice to keep the popcorn from spilling out. The bottom of the bag alway had that dark spot where the oil had dripped down.

Another house we always stopped at always had Three Musketeers bars. I have always loved those and that house was a must do. Sometimes we’d get a candied apple and we always ended up with plenty of tootsie rolls and random hard candy.

It was a lot of fun and it was innocent. We’d even have a Halloween party at our school where invariably some Mom would send cupcakes for everybody. Who wouldn’t dig that?

As we got older somebody decided to spoil the fun. Rumors began to circulate that malevolent individuals were inserting razor blades into apples and injecting “dope” into the candy. Parents began to be more cautious. Hospitals began offering to X-Ray candy to make sure it was all free from “foreign objects.” (I always thought if you were the type who would go so far as to have candy x-rayed, why didn’t you just go to the store and buy some that you could be reasonably assured had not been tampered with.)

Halloween began to have a bad name. With the rise of modern-day evangelicalism, many began to reject Halloween and the celebration of as being un-Christian. Many churches began offering a Halloween alternative, a Harvest or Fall Festival. Stores even got in on the act. Entire shopping centers began to allow children to trick or treat there.

Because Halloween has some obscure pagan origins, and because the influence of Hollywood monster movies has permeated the secular celebration of it, Halloween has become viewed as being evil by many evangelical Christians.

For my part, I think that is a bit of an overreaction. But again that’s just my opinion. One of the dearest friends of our family does not celebrate Halloween as a matter of conviction. I have no problem with that and whole-heartedly support their decision.

I hesitate to bring this up, but it’s a lot like the Harry Potter debate. Quite a few intelligent, thinking, respectable people I know want nothing to do with Harry Potter due to the biblical prohibition of dabbling with sorcery. That’s fine with me and I don’t say they are wrong.  I however, believe that Harry Potter is merely a fictional universe created by a clever writer for the purposes of entertainment, not an apparatus to covertly guide the readers down a dark and sinister trail that must end with a wholesale embrace of the occult. (That’s what Freemasonry is for, not Harry Potter or Halloween).

See over the years I’ve heard people make the statement, “It’s not like it used to be.” Oh really!?! I’ve taken my kids trick or treating a few times and it’s exactly like it used to be. We only take our children to the houses of people we know (or their grandparents know). We encourage them to say thank you and we all have a good time doing it.

October 31 was also the Day that the Protestant Reformation officially began in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door of the All Saint’s Church. If you are a card-carrying Protestant as I am, then I suggest you combine the celebration of the Reformation with Halloween. Print out a copy of the 95 theses and under the cover of darkness (tape, not nail) them to the door of your local Catholic Church. You can commit a harmless prank and help correct wrong doctrine all at the same time.

School Days of Old – Episode 3

I have to wait until this weekend to take the example pictures for the next installment of How to Take Better Pictures so today I’m going to revisit School Days of Old again.

This time I was in the 7th grade at West Cleveland. Yes this was the same year as the infamous Super Bowl incident described in School Days of Old Episode 1. Now every now and again the school lined up a speaker for a school wide assembly. They were always extremely boring and would usually put even the teachers to sleep. (Sometimes we had animal shows which were good. They would show off a bunch of snakes, apes, and monkeys. Not a bad way to get out of having class.)

Back to the topic at hand. Let me put it this way, if you were given a choice between staying in class and diagramming sentences or going to hear the assembly speaker, the sentences would win out. It wouldn’t even be close.

One wonderful Friday afternoon, the school trotted out a particularly dull and uninteresting fellow. The long years since this happened have caused my memory to fail. I can’t remember what he was speaking about. Actually the very next day I doubt I remembered what he was speaking about. It was just that bad.

Seventh and eighth graders are 13, 14, or 15. Being a rural county there were also a hand full of eighth graders with full beards. I kind of suspected they were older than the rest of us. Probably a by-product of non-selective genetics. In a rural county there are plenty of people who seem in appearance and deed to be the off-spring of close kinfolk.

Once again, back to our story. At that age attention spans are not what they should be. Add to that a boring speaker and you have all the ingredients present for an afternoon of misbehaviour. Before long there were scattered whispers, students doing everything they could to stay amused. More time passed and soon half of the student population was openly ignoring the speaker by talking to friends in low whispers.

My intent here is not to paint the principal (not Mr. Padgett who was a character in Episode 2) in a sympathetic fashion since he is the villain of the story. But I do have to say I’m sure he was mightily embarrassed that his students were so openly ignoring his speaker to the point of wanton rudeness. And he had all weekend to stew about it.

Sometime the following Monday morning, the principal came on the intercom and expressed just how disappointed he was in his students for all the talking that went on in the assembly. In fact, his teachers had a rather lengthy list of names that they had turned over to him of students who were observed talking or misbehaving in some fashion. Now he was offering a choice. If you thought your name was on the list you could voluntarily come up to the office and receive your just reward (meaning a paddling). If you did not come to the office and your name was on the list, it would be a week’s suspension. Back then there was no in school detention. You had to stay home for a week.

I knowed (that’s Southern for “I knew”) that I was guilty. Less than thrilled to face the music, I chose the easier of the two paths. I went forward voluntarily as a guilty party. If I didn’t and received the suspension, when my parents learned of it, it would be “Katy Bar the Door”, whatever that means.

Students began streaming toward the office at the end of announcement. There was a line from the cafeteria to the office of students who were admitting guilt and waiting to receive their paddling. Hundreds of students. Maybe half the school. Maybe more.

After a wait of what seemed like an hour I made it into the principal’s office. To my surprise I did not see a list. There was no list. We had been had.

I am not excusing our behaviour as students. It was rude, it was disrespectful, and it was just plain wrong. But it was more wrong of the principal to fabricate his deceitful story. Seventh and eighth graders are not usually very mature. Our principal was a mature well-seasoned man who should have taken the moral high road. At the very least he should have actually had teachers take names or simply interrupt the assembly and call us down.

So what did we learn from this? Well the next assembly went much better. But we learned that ends can be achieved by deceit and dishonesty.

Finally even though I made the principal the villain of the story, aside from that he was a pretty good fellow. While this was a moral failure on his part, the truth is I have failed miserably in my life many times when given the opportunity to take the moral high ground. But you’ll never hear about those times here. Why? Cause it’s my blog!!

How to Take Better Pictures – Part 1

From time to time I have people ask for advice concerning taking pictures. I realized that even though a lot of the basics seem simple to me, that there is a whole world of folks out there who are just mystified by the whole concept of cameras and good photography. If you are one of those people then this post will be for you. If you are a Camel (and if you’re not sure if you are or not then you aren’t) move along; I have nothing to teach you.

The first and most obvious question I get is what camera is good. My answer is the one you have. You just have to realize that it has limitations. It will serve you well and give you excellent shots if you just understand that there are just certain things it cannot and should not be expected to do.

Now unless you are old school and still use a film camera, you probably own a pocket-size digital point and shoot that has a brand like Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Sony, Fuji, Casio, etc. All of these are well made and very capable little machines. But none of them will produce a great image straight out of camera (SOOC). My big professional DSLR will not produce it’s best image SOOC either. For that it needs to have a little basic photo editing done to it.

Now this sounds scary to a lot of people. For instance I use Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe Lightroom 2.5, Photomatix, and several other very nifty Photoshop plugins. Photoshop is the industry standard for image editing. It also has a learning curve so steep that it might be easier for a ‘Bama fan to quit being obnoxious than for the average person to master Photoshop.  I promise you I haven’t even come close to mastering it, but after several years of using it, I can do a lot of things.

Fortunately you don’t need Photoshop unless you are going for advanced photo editing. My suggestion is to use Google’s free and excellent software called Picasa. It is easy to use and even the most basic tools can make a tremendous difference in your images. Did I mention that it is free?

I’m gonna show you just how easy using Picasa really is. Here is an image I took about a year ago that is SOOC. Nothing has been done to it at all.

Notice that it looks underexposed. Now if you’re like me you see hundreds of these sorts of pictures everyday on Facebook. They’re dark, they’re in a nutshell just awful. But notice what happens to this image when I use the one click Auto-Contrast button in Picasa’ “Basic Fix” tab.

See how my beautiful wife just pops out of the image while the background stays dark? All that from one click in Picasa. So easy that even a ‘Bama fan should be able to do it with no problem.

One other thing I like to do is crop my pictures. You can do that in Picasa very easily too. I cropped it to an 8 x 10 format and included everything in the picture I thought was important. I didn’t feel like I needed everything and cropping in tighter would only improve this image. Take a look:

Some of the other thingsPicasa will do with one click is convert your images to B/W or sepia, add glow, sharpen, and saturation to your images. I’d play with some of this stuff because it’s a lot of fun, but one word of warning. An occasional picture which screams I’ve been manipulated is okay, but your goal is to make your images as realistic looking as possible so it’s best to avoid doing every image that way.

And I’ll end this on a note of caution. If you plan on sending off your digital image files to be printed, don’t downsize them. Leave them at full resolution. When you downsize them, the image drops out pixels and reduces your resolution. It’s okay to do for Facebook but for printing, be sure you don’t.

Next time I will discuss which lighting situations to avoid and which lighting situations to seek out.

My Daughter and the Fire Ants

Anyone who lives in the South (or most parts of it anyway) knows about fire ants. They are extremely pesky ants that often build large colonies where there are likely to be thousands of the little devils living at any particular time. If they bite you it feels like your flesh is on fire. Hence they are called fire ants. (That last bit of information was to benefit you that are not privileged to live in the South. We have a word for you, but I’m gonna be polite and not use it.)

Five or six years ago my daughter stood in a fire ant mound, unbeknownst to her. Within seconds, she had about a dozen bites. Fortunately she didn’t prove to be allergic to them so all was okay other than the screaming because she was in pain.

I used that opportunity to teach her about fire ants. I found a mound and got a long stick and prodded at the mound. Within seconds, hundreds of fire ants came rushing out. “See how quick they can come out,” I told her.

Now I am a little warped. Big surprise there huh? For some reason I got some sort of twisted pleasure from stirring up the fire ant colony. I think my daughter did too. So from time to time we would find a mound and get a long stick just to stir them up. Sometimes I would even kick at the mound to make it worse. Once the ants started swarming out of the mound we would retreat to a safe distance. We never got bit. Not even once. I even let my daughter stir them up sometimes under my supervision of course.

Several years ago Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore installed a monument to the Ten Commandments, inside the court building. Knowing a huge legal showdown was coming and that the monument would soon be forcibly removed, I took my daughter to see it. She took one look at it then asked me if we could go stir up some fire ants. That might be more fun. I can’t say I disagreed.

Flash forward to the present. We got word that my daughter had been misbehaving some in her third grade class. Most of it was for talking and passing notes, but one of the issues was the teacher caught her not once but twice jumping up and down on a fire ant mound. The teacher described her as jumping as high as she could, even pulling her legs up close to her body, then extending them as she was on the way down in order to exert maximum force against the fire ants.

I have to say. I am not happy she was doing that. In fact in many ways I am disappointed in her because she does know how dangerous they are and she also knows a dear sweet classmate of hers is highly allergic. But on the other hand the mental picture of her jumping up and down almost made me burst out laughing. Fortunately I didn’t because the teacher (who is a treasure of a lady that we deeply admire and respect) was very concerned and grieved over that incident.

I don’t think there is really a moral to this story. I blame myself to a certain extent. But I also have taught her that we don’t play the victim card. We are responsible for our own actions. I guess if I have a motive for writing this post it is an attempt to deal with my own conflicted feelings. I’m horrified and amused by it all at the same time. I guess that’s just one of those paradoxes of parenthood.