Currently Listening Challengers By The New Pornographers see related

Christmastide. 

Funny how we perceive time to move more quickly one moment than at others.  It doesn't seem like I should be staying up late, hoping that the snow and sleet will prompt a certain office to close.  And is it my imagination, or are there more of those claymation Christmas cartoons this year?  I don't remember there being one called "Akimbo the Blue-Tongued Kwanza Giraffe" before.  It's another subtle move by that clandestine conspiratorial cabal (the one behind various assassinations, arcane treasures, etc.) to make us more tolerant, I guess. 

On the one hand, I could make the tired-and-trite observations about Christmas commercialism, etc. ad infinitum.  I mean, to mark a religious holiday according to your purchasing schedule does seem a little suspect.  On the other hand, I am really thankful to be able to give gifts to people that I love.  I feel like I want to create an awkward scene with every gift I give this year by looking the person in the eye and saying "I AM ONLY DOING THIS BECAUSE I CARE AND WANT TO NOT BECAUSE I FEEL SOME TACIT SEASONAL PRESSURE TO CONSUME."  Would that ring of a little self-righteousness, though?  Probably.  The old Dave would have probably done something like that (if you know me, you are probably nodding in affirmation).

It does make me think about redemption, though -and that's a good thing to be thinking about these days.  I mean obviously we are thinking about Jesus, who Is Redemption.  But here I mean redemption in the sense of my role as a redeemer in culture.  It occurs to me that the same God who once set us in motion as caretakers has in Christ set us again in motion as redeemers.  Not in the spiritual sense that we are doing what Jesus did for sin, but in the sense that we who believe and have been reborn are able to live life as Christ followers and infuse all that we do with new life where before there was only the Curse.  Like spiritual ginseng or something.

Back to the point: it's easy to join the cool Christian kid bandwagon and blog about the travesty of Western holiday celebrations, and it's difficult to just be an infuser-redeemer. 

I'm kind of a sucky guy sometimes and not especially obedient and so this will be hard for me.  I will want to either embrace the vapid materialism without much more than token spirituality -or- beat my drum about how terrible everyone else is.  The reality is that we should be recovering the idea(L)s of Christmas like giving gifts and family togetherness and reconnecting them to their root -the celebration of Jesus- rather than tearing them down in a fit of self-righteous hipsterism/homeschoolerism.  Yeah Jesus turned over tables, but that was a means and not an end.  Problem is that I tend to stop and dwell there, you know?

It's not really my inclination to be self-reflective without a hearty smack in the back of the head, so for my part I'm going to pray that God will remind me to be a redeemer, to give and celebrate with a heart of thanks and a mind for Jesus and to use this time as an opportunity to bless others for the right reasons.