Christmas confusion

from here

If someone was to bother asking me how I felt about Christmas, I’d say ambivalent. I feel somewhat guilty about this, being a Christian and all, but I find it hard to marry the Jesus I know with the Christmas we celebrate; I’m not sure how much they’re actually related. This year I’ve had to think more about my feelings towards Christmas because Moses is getting to an age where he’s starting to understand what’s going on, and my husband and I have therefore had to discuss our ideas about what Christmases will look like in our household in future. Moses gets very excited about seeing Santa (he calls him “Horse Man,” as we didn’t give the ‘reindeer’ lesson in time), and waves enthusiastically at each of the many we pass by, but when we talked about what he’d say if Santa asked what he wanted for Christmas, Moses told me he wanted to “dig a big hole.” He’s still working it out, too.

There’s so much about Christmas that doesn’t make much sense to me. I don’t get Santa. Is it okay to lie to kids about where their presents come from? If so, why? Are any other lies okay, or just Santa-related lies? I don’t know. I don’t get the whole tree thing. What does the tree symbolise? Is it just a pretty altar at which to lay our gifts, or does it actually mean something? I don’t know. I don’t get candy canes, and, though I love seeing fairy lights dripping from rooftops, I don’t understand their link with the birth of Jesus. And because Christmas is supposedly a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, why am I therefore being showered with gift vouchers and soaps and cards? I don’t know. I don’t really like Christmas carols. Like most songs I’ve heard a bazillion times, I don’t think about the words anymore, and I’m over the tunes. Plus, when you do pay attention to the words, they’re not always super clear:

Christ by highest heav’n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
”Glory to the newborn King!”

It’s hard to translate verses like these to modern English when the singers are already onto the chorus again. What does the line ‘Away in a manger’ mean? And if cattle were lowing, then was it really a Silent Night? AND if Jesus was indeed fully human, then he probably cried at least once. (I reckon Mary would have shed a few tears, too: “Really, God? In a barn?!”) Why do we insist on singing songs with annoying tunes and lyrics that people can’t easily understand, year after year after year after year? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

Yesterday as the woman at the supermarket scanned my groceries, she asked, “So, have you finished all of your Christmas shopping yet?” and I had to tell her that I didn’t really have any Christmas shopping to do. She gave me a look that said, “What kind of a person doesn’t have Christmas shopping to do?!” and I replied with a look that tried to say, ”I guess it sounds weird, but Jesus is important to me every day of the year, and I don’t really know how he’d feel about the extravagant way we celebrate his birthday; I’m still figuring out what all the food and presents and busyness have to do with God fulfilling centuries of prophecy by arriving among us as a newborn – humbled and bloody and tiny and vulnerable, in a barn in the middle of nowhere – to repair the relationship that was broken way back in Eden (when created told Creator, ‘I don’t really want You in my life!’); Jesus shows up and grows up and, unlike us, clings to God, living in perfect harmony and oneness with the Creator and with others, thereby making it possible through his sacrificial death and hope-inspiring resurrection for us to do the same!”

But I don’t know that I got my eyebrows completely right and she went back to concentrating on her cash register before I’d finished my silent explanation.

I’m pretty sure it’s a mini Christmas each time the nativity story pops up in our cycle of bedtime Bible readings with our son, and every time we pause and remember the full gospel, starting from Genesis, rather than one that only includes Jesus’ death and resurrection. And so I’m still not entirely sure how to do Decembers, and which traditions – if any – our little family should embrace and which we should discard. Our celebrations may change over time as we figure out more and more what it means to live out our faith in this time and place, and as Moses gets old enough to join in the discussions. I hope so. Until then, I shall remain ambivalent, although I sincerely hope that your Christmas is a blessed one, full of love and fellowship and other similarly beautiful gifts from God.

My friend made this sweet little video, which is one Christmas-related thing I’ve found myself loving this year:

Posey photos (a post inspired by Facebook and Dr. Seuss)

old glasses

 new glasses

 sunglasses

 two glasses

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

This book was recommended to me by Lou in the comments section of my ranty blog post about The Hunger Games, in which I lamented the violent stories so popular among young people these days and wondered what had happened to sweet and non-murderous characters like Anne (of Green Gables fame). Swallows and Amazons was first published in 1930, so it’s from the same era as Anne, and it’s exactly the thing to read to restore your faith in a book’s ability to entertain with nothing more than simple writing, imaginative kids and a sailboat. The book follows the adventures of 6 kids who spend their summer holiday pretending to be pirates, and camping and falling asleep exhausted every night from days full of exploring and adventure. There are no battles with wizards or fights for their lives, but there is one pirate game they play in the story that kept me up one night just to find out who’d win.

I’d like to say this book is a cross between Robinson Crusoe and Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, but I really shouldn’t since I’ve read neither of those. It’s the kind of book I imagine reading with Moses as soon as he’s old enough, although before you start scanning op shop shelves for it, I should warn you: this book will make you want to go camping, no matter how anti-camping you are before reading. Also, one of the characters is named Titty, which, if you’re anything like me, may distract you from the story and make you snicker for at least the first 20 pages.

Post title

Although I enjoy naming live things, I hate naming my writing. This started back in school, and I have proof: 

This is a photo of three of my polished pieces from Year 12, each of them title-less, as Mrs Curtis has so kindly pointed out. I lost marks for not giving them names.

It’s somewhat ironic that coming up with titles continues to be a drama in my life because of this blog; I’m terrible at naming my blog posts, and still don’t have a reliable system for it. Many of my posts have short and/or uninformative names (like ’Conundrum’ or ’Er...’), but I’ve also dabbled in long, too-informative names (like this one [I can’t be bothered typing the whole thing out, it’s too long]), and others have slightly wanky names like ’The Journey’ that I ended up deciding on after arguing with myself about it for, like, hours. These fights always end with, “IT DOESN’T ACTUALLY MATTER, BELLE, JUST POST THE FLIPPING THING!!” But it does matter, and I dwell on a bad title for days afterwards.

I’m confessing this just in case you’ve read one of my post titles and thought, “Really?!” – I KNOW! I feel the same way. I’m really sorry, I do try. If you’ve made/picked up any instructions for post naming, I’d truly love to hear them. And if you start seeing posts with titles like d’Artagnan or Fern (or any other name I rather like but would never be allowed to call my child), you’ll know exactly why.

Maths

from here

Holidays + husband still away + Microsoft Paint = new look for blog.

Is it too loud?

I'm freaking out right now. It all happened rather quickly and I'm still not sure I've done the right thing. Interestingly, this is exactly how I feel every time I cut myself a fringe...

Love & Other Drugs

Although the ads for Love & Other Drugs completely failed to convince me it would be a movie I’d enjoy, I later read an interview with the author of Hard Sell (the book upon which the movie is based) and thought the story sounded interesting. So when I recently raided my sister’s DVD collection to celebrate the start of holidays I thought I’d give the film a go based on what (little) I knew of the book and on the fact that it was now allowed to be terrible because I‘d paid no money to see it. The film took a long time – like, a  loooong time – to grab me; a lot of the first half of the movie is pretty much an extended montage of Jake Gyllenhaal (who plays Jamie) having sex with various women, so I found myself thinking very little about the movie and instead wondering: 

1) Are there really are women out there who cannot help but jump into bed with whatever rugged man smiles vaguely in their direction? Sure there may be some such women out there, but to portray all women as being turned to randy mush in Gyllenhaal’s presence seems more like someone’s fantasy than someone’s reality. I tend to prefer reality in movies, and especially in movies that are based on a non-fiction book.

2) Why is it that couples in movies (I’m sure there are other examples, although I can think of absolutely none right now) have lots and lots of sex while they don’t know/like each other that much, and then after they start to fall in love the sex is replaced with sweet scenes of board-game-playing and food-eating and conversation and snuggling on couches while reading books? This seems backward to me. It’s quite possible that there was just as much sex in the second half of the movie, but I’d become so desensitised to the sight of bare bottoms that I merely yawned and went to refill my glass, however I’m pretty sure that the amount of sex decreased as their feelings for each other increased. And this strikes me as being odd.

3) How poorly must this film be engaging and entertaining me if I’m thinking through all of this while it’s still on?

I did consider turning the movie off a few times, wondering where it could possibly go that would justify where it’d been, but there’s a turning point where the characters become more real and the story finally chooses a clear direction in which to head and you realise that Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway are actually quite talented actors and then all of the sudden they’re crying and you’re crying and you turn it off thinking, WOW – that was weird, but much better than I was expecting. And the end was good mainly because the beginning was boring; you have to sit through the emptiness to appreciate the depth. Maybe.

This isn’t a great film, but it’s not a bad film, either, and it’s certainly not as bad as you may think it is even halfway through it when your mind is still wandering and you have no idea what the point of it all is. My advice, therefore, is this: if you’re looking for a movie to watch, pick something else. But, if you find yourself watching this one and are at the 40 minute mark and considering switching it off, don’t. It’s worth persisting with, and the end does feel like a reward for those who were after a rom-com and made it through the beginning. I give the first half of the movie a 3 out of 10, and the second half a 7 - for those who aren’t at all mathematical, that’s an average of ’meh’.