There’s a story that goes like this. After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong. Finally, the boy replied, “That preacher said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I wanted to stay with you guys.”

You can hide and fool a lot of people, but there are two categorical umpires who always make the right call: God and your kids. God knows your hypocrisy because he is omniscient. Your kids know your sins because they live with you.

We were at the final game of my son’s Little League baseball season a couple weeks ago. The umpire was making some pretty bad calls, and it’s not just the poor sport in me talking. In two seasons of baseball, my son struck out once. In this one game alone, he struck out twice. “Mom, I had to swing! He calls a strike even if the pitch is over my head!” I don’t mind bad calls… so long as both teams get ‘em.

So there’s our team’s runner on second, right? He steals third as the catcher fumbles the pitch. A hard throw down to third base, and the third baseman snags it over his head as the runner slides under him. We’re totally safe, right? Wrong. The umpire calls us OUT!?! [For my lady friends—you have to tag the runner when it’s not a force.] The bleachers went wild, and for the rest of the game, I gave the ump some helpful commentary, peppered with game rules when necessary. We lost by one.

Our children are much better observers. When the ball is on the outside, they know it. Then they call you on it. When I warn my 8-year-old about harsh, rash words and then deliver a few myself, I embitter him against me. Better to get off my soapbox than to say one thing and do another.

This is one reason that seculars can raise great kids and Christian parents can sometimes turn out scowling mockers. Hypocrisy breeds bitterness.

Whenever I’m tempted to bask in my self-righteousness, there’s always a kid underfoot who wonders aloud, “Hey Mom, didn’t you say?…” Caught. I thank God for it. In this way, young ones are a measure of God’s grace toward me if I’m meek enough to listen and repent.

You might have noticed that my server crashed for the third time in only a couple weeks. I apologize for the feed reader going nut-so. Since I’ll be switching hosts soon, there might be a few more glitches.

I lose data every time this happens: comments, posts, links, any html changes that I did. So if I added you to my link page and now you’re gone, this isn’t because I’ve axed you purposely. Please resend your links, info, and requests for a refund.

I wonder if the site crashed because I posted every day this week. I was so out of control. Everyday?!

I believe my exact words were to Greg, “I have a feeling he’ll see the light when Blogger crashes on him in the middle of posting. Suddenly, a Chick Blog won’t look so bad.” Humble pie is good for a humble blogger.

I walked into The Lazy Bean Café this morning with two of my girls in tow. The usual 20-something girl was on the café’s computer checking her myspace page. A small group of teens sat in a semicircle around the couch with their books open, more for effect as they were talking more than studying. It was empty otherwise.

I bought my girls a muffin and took out a loan for a frappachino. The owners are a young Christian family. In fact, the tall guy with the glasses, who I thought was 18 but is really 30, owns the place. I perused the prayer board and remembered a few notes (especially the ones about kids and cancer).

Our next stop was PetSmart to purchase a larger collar for Knox. He’s getting bigger, and I’m waiting for him to act like it. A way-too-young Santa was set up in the pet store, waiting to take a picture with your cat, dog, or parrot for $8.95. Everyone just walked around acting as if this gluttonous set-up was normal and a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

When we went next door to Publix for a double-cart shopping trip, fifteen-year-old local high school cheerleaders stopped us for money. (Sorry, no more money. I’m already forced to fork over $2500 every year to you folks, who can’t afford to buy your young, beautiful girls a skirt that would cover their thighs.) I felt sorry for those girls, who reminded me so much of myself at that age. Adults who are entrusted to protect our children, instead pimp them out to bring in more money for their retirement accounts. (If you’re inclined to argue my point, first ask yourself why the math club members never hold car washes in bikinis.) In another time and another place, the teachers and school board officials would be run out of town for this prostitution. But here, we empty our change purses, wish them a Happy Holidays, and hope some of them will actually learn a little math with more money.

And everyone continues walking around like this is normal and okay.

We continued our shopping, stopping at the deli and the bakery, where everyone knows the Scotts, or rather, “that family with five little kids.” The baker grabbed the fresh sourdough from the back and sliced it thin, just how we like it. Since I only had two children with me, no old ladies stopped me and told me stories about “back in the day.” I missed it.

We did chat a little with a mid-40’s woman who chastised my children for not liking broccoli. “They’re in good company,” I countered, “Even the president hates broccoli.” The scowl on her face told me that she was a democrat, and that was the end of that.

I felt bad for not waiting in the line for our favorite checkout lady, but she gave us a hearty wave on our way out. I felt like a traitor, exchanging the expediency of a newly opened register for conversion with our favorite checkout lady. We will look for her next time. Greg or I will bring more kids next time, as well, and then everything will feel better.

The more things change, the more we look for comfort in the familiar. That’s why traditions appeal to seculars as well as Christians. People who are searching for Jesus do not want pop culture with a Jesus-angle, but rather, something otherworldly. Our Christian girls are not for sale. Our sacred celebrations are not $8.95 Santa photo shoots. When the modern American church gets a clue, we will see more people come to know and worship the Jesus, that is for now, next to the Santa Claus on their Christmas trees.

I just finished reading Henry and the Great Society. Shame on me for taking this long to get my hands on a copy. As I began write a summary, a further look uncovered a more thoughtful and helpful examination in the Cumberland Books catalog. I’ve copied the summation below and hope you find it beneficial. Afterward, I included a few notes of my own.

Briefly, Henry and the Great Society is the story of Henry, a man living in a cultural cul-de-sac, who was pursuing a way of life that was perhaps a hundred years behind the times, when modern living suddenly becomes a possibility. Henry himself is not much attracted to modern living, but his wife and children are, and he naturally wants them to have the best—the “good things in life,” as he puts it. A series of seemingly inconsequential decisions, each one apparently beneficial in itself, inexorably destroys the self-sufficient, productive, peaceful, and satisfied Henry, transforming him into a thoroughly modern man—dependent, debt-ridden, unhealthy, overworked, worried. Henry’s family is destroyed as his wife and children find lives to live outside the home.

Because H.L. Roush barely fleshes out the characters of Henry, his wife Esther, and his children, it is that much easier for the reader to project himself into the story. Every time Henry takes another step away from agrarianism and towards The Great Society, your heart sinks and you want to shout out a warning—Don’t do it, Henry! Don’t you see what a high price you’ll pay for such a trivial gain?

But all the while you know that you were just as prone to Henry to have chosen the same path. In fact, you’re much further down that path, due to your own choices and the choices of those that went before you. You are fully immersed in the life of dependence and specialization and wage-slavery that Henry is steadily inching towards, and so you know exactly how much Henry is throwing away, exactly what sort of bondage he is selling himself into.

We recommend that you stop reading the book at the end of Henry’s story (p. 86). You won’t want to, because the ending is very bleak and you will be looking for some respite from the story, something to encourage you. Unfortunately, the final part of the book consists of H.L. Roush’s theological reflections
on the story, and they aren’t especially edifying. Best to think through the story yourself, perhaps even read it to your children, and together as a family consider what went wrong for Henry, how he might have avoided the downward spiral, and what lessons can be applied to your own circumstances.

Since our friend Chad Degenhart first introduced us to this book, we thought it would be fitting to include a review that Chad once posted on his fine weblog, House of Degenhart [Edit: Date-Dabitur is his new site].

Henry and the Great Society is definitely not the feel-good story that Heiland is. If you’ve ever felt like you were caught in the rat race, caught on a treadmill, too busy, unfulfilled, overworked, or a slave to your job or your debts, you should read this book. If you’ve ever been on a camping trip to “get away from it all”, or visited a rural countryside, a scenic mountain range, or lush wilderness, and said “Now this is God’s country”, you should read this book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Some people will read it and have no idea what its about. Others will read it and get angry or exasperated. But for a few of you, this book will touch your heart and wrench your gut at the same time. While it may depress you just a little, the next feeling that you might have is a compelling desire to buy the book in bulk to distribute to everyone you know.

My question for everyone that empathizes with Henry is: what should he have done? And further, what should we do to avoid his fate? One of the differences I see in Henry and Heiland is that Heiland built family and community, and Henry lost those things because he didn’t value them highly enough, he didn’t understand them or what was required to nourish them, and he never weighed his decisions in terms of what it would really cost his family and community. For instance, $1,000 to Henry seemed like a reasonable price to purchase a used car—but as the book unfolds we see what it costs Henry. His wife can now attend PTA meetings and Canasta games, leaving Henry and kids to heat up microwave dinners for supper. The children no longer knew their land or neighbors, as they now only traveled through their community at 60mph with their heads buried in comic books or magazines. The maintenance on the car required more trips to town, more phone calls, and more debt to manage. The ease of traveling to town translated into more and more trips to town, and less and less time together at home. Property taxes went up because of the costs of paving and maintaining the road, and Henry had to sell parts of his homestead to stay (temporarily) afloat.

The author of Henry and the Great Society does a masterful job of showing how “the good things in life” end up killing us. What he doesn’t do is show us what to do about it, and so we’re left wondering what Henry should have done, and how far we need to go to get our freedom back. What makes it worse is that most of us that read the book have started out in a much worse position than Henry did. Part of what makes Henry’s story so sad is the great amount that he lost, but some of us had nothing much to start with, being second or third generation wage/rent/mortgage/property tax/zoning/technology slaves. Sometimes it seems that the only solution is to run even faster on the treadmill, so that we can produce incrementally more than necessary in order to purchase our freedom, so to speak. It seems to me that Henry can’t win without first winning back the hearts of his family, and then the hearts of his community, and that there are things that must be done which are far beyond the scope of the individual. Part of the detrimental effects of modern industrial society is the loss of real community, and part of the antithesis must be to build it within the context of God’s laws which offer protection and objective standards for dealing with societal problems. The simple, contented life is impossible in isolation, our future requires community cooperation. God’s laws provide a sure foundation for us to build upon, and modern society will crumble precisely because it is not built upon God’s laws, but on sinking sand.

Rick mentions the shallowness of the characters, and I couldn’t tell if this was purposeful or not. Nevertheless, while the device enables the reader to substitute his/her own circumstances, what it doesn’t do is give a lot of credibility to the initial chapters. The author paints a glorious picture of agrarian living and minimalizes the hardships by conveniently leaving them out. A better approach (in order to appeal to the cynics, I suppose) would’ve been to point out that the benefits far outweigh the inconveniences instead of just pretending that the hardships aren’t there. I thought this was a weakness in the book, but maybe there was something profound there that I missed.

This book is important because it details a journey that we’d like to do in reverse. Careful thought and planning are going into how to make this happen. How do we launch our children into the world, avoiding the consumerism and discontentment that ultimately killed Henry and is killing us? How do we take steps now to start walking the other direction? The author writes on the subject of our children’s inheritance which we are taking steps to build now, “We are concerned about their education, and the material fortune we can leave them; but what about the legacy of a way of life? We do not seem to remember that as we walk our feet are creating upon the impressionable earth a path that, although we are long gone, our children will continue to follow without a thought or reason in regard to the rightness of it.” (p. 92)

In order to jump out of the rat race, you must first realize that you’re in it. This book will open your eyes to that if you aren’t already convinced of it. While I feel glad to know that I’m a rat and only 30, how much better would it have been if I’d known sooner? Henry was content with food, clothing, shelter, and an honest day’s work. The theme of contentment is implicit throughout the book and always a good thing to discuss, whether or not you are convinced that an agrarian model is best way to achieve it.

Amy’s Humble Musings official quote lady, Elisabeth Elliot, gets a taste of her own medicine in yesterday’s reading of Keep a Quiet Heart. (You can sign up at Gateway to Joy.) Whenever I get a little cantankerous, Greg will often quote something I recently wrote. Why search out new words when my own betray me? It is all in good fun and usually generates a few laughs.

Many of you know Elliot’s famous line is, “Just do the next thing!” This is her advice to many things, most notably to people who are asking how to find the will of God. Here Elisabeth Elliot describes five days of homeschooling four grandchildren alone. Ah, a sweet saint gets a good testing:

School began at nine with Bible reading, singing, prayer, all four joining in. Jim sat on the floor and played while the others studied. Christiana finished her kindergarten work by ten or so, Walter and Elisabeth worked till nearly lunchtime.

I should confess this–on the evening of the first day I wasn’t sure I’d survive the week. When Val phoned I asked, “How do you do it?” “Mama, I just do what you taught me: don’t think about all you have to do, just do the next thing!” I needed to be told what I have often told others, and it worked.

Our day looks similar to this one. I hang on to quiet hour for dear life…except in our house it’s two.

I figured I wouldn’t have to start buying the forbidden-on-Ebay teacher manuals until at least fourth grade. Yes, fourth grade seems about right because I don’t want to work each long division problem myself. But this one stumped me:

Two ducks watch the wheels of the cars that pass. The first duck said she counted 24 wheels. The second duck said he counted only 22. Which was correct and why?

Naturally, whichever duckie was paying closer attention is correct. We can’t always assume that it’s the female, you know. But I assume there is a more logical answer to this one.

Last night I heard that two-year-old Ava sang “Away in a Danger” instead of Away in a Manger. She might have a point about that song being a little dangerous, as it’s just not right to say that Jesus was a “no-crying-he-made” kind of baby. Where does the Bible say that? It’s funny how kids change the words to some songs.

Greg admits to singing To God Be the Glory a little creatively as a youngster: “I used to think we were singing about ‘Great Thingsy,’ and I always wondered who Great Thingsy was and why we were singing about what he has done.”

I do this same sort of thing with certain Bible verses. When Jesus said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” (Matthew 25:40) I have this picture of Mother Theresa in my mind’s eye petting a scraggly orphan on the head, rocking a sleeping baby, or pouring water into a little glass in an orderly kitchen with a serene look on her face. Matronly and 50’s-style Leave It to Beaver fashion. The act of accepting one of the “least of these” in Jesus’ name always evokes this tranquil sort of image and application in my mind.

Even those Sunday School flannelgraph pictures reinforce this notion. You know, the one of the long-haired, fair-skinned Jesus surrounded by smiling children who don’t interrupt His Bible story by tattling, throwing up, or loosing a tooth.

Accepting the “least of these” looks like cuddling a cooing baby that looks like this:

Not this:

Like so many things, God always means something greater and bigger than what we first imagine. While I wait and pray for a no-crying-he-makes kind of baby, I don’t hold my breath. Statistically with five now, I figure it’s about my turn for one of these “easy” babies. In the meantime, though, God gets the glory, the attention, the supplication from one of His weak servants. Truly, great thingsy has done.

Greg’s tweaking the site a little today. We changed the background color for the benefit of IE7 users. Let me know if it’s more readable. IE7 readers have been demanding refunds daily. You’ll still have to use a real browser (ahem) to view this site correctly, but I hope the color change makes it manageable if you don’t switch browsers.

RSS readers, why don’t you click on over and tell me how you like the new digs (that you’ll never appreciate in your feed reader)?

We took the new header picture this morning. The neighbors oohed and ahhed over the cuteness of our setup, and I smiled and waved hypocritically as if this was really fun. Through gritted teeth, I’d whisper: LOOK. AT. ME. AND. BE. HAPPY. (please?) Greg lay in the wet grass with the camera. I periodically dropped the baby and ran toward the camera to jump up and down before anyone moved. Snap. 74 pictures later and we have one without tears and without half my leg in the shot. So this is us. Sort of.

It’s not my general habit to quote Oprah type personalities (lest I be accused of eating bon bons), but this gem from Maya Angelou is too good, “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

If I were famous and people hung on my every word, I’d phrase it like this, “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a guy by the way he treats his mother, what he does when he loses, and how he reacts to getting cut off in traffic.” On the flip side, I think you can tell a lot about a lady by how long she takes to get ready, what the inside of her microwave looks like, and if she regifts.

I haven’t always known these things, and I’m sure I’m still missing a few obvious insights. However, I just know things about women who paint their toes odd colors. And people who refer to themselves as “creative”? They aren’t early risers. Men who are able to use “affect” and “effect” properly and interchangeably have orderly sock drawers. I know all about these sorts of things.

Fortunately, I lucked out anyway when I married my husband, because I still had a lot to learn when I was 19. For starters, sadly, Greg’s mom had passed away from cancer two years before we met. I never met her or saw how Greg treated her. Secondly, after knowing Greg for 12 years, I’ve never seen him lose anything. He came home after taking the GRE and said, “I think I missed one.” (He was right.) It’s tough being married to an over-achiever, especially when you wish you were one yourself. And thirdly, I can’t tell how he reacts to getting cut off because my ranting is too loud to hear his commentary.

In case you were wondering, I can be presentable in 5 minutes, my microwave is clean, and I don’t regift. Obviously, the dichotomies are troubling, but I didn’t claim this was a perfect system.

When I was in eighth grade (I’ll try not to make this boring), I was the pianist for our middle school chorus. At our grand year-end performance, my page turner dropped the entire score of music on the floor and just sat there. I continued on as far as my memory could take me—which was like two measures—then I stopped, got up, gathered the music while the director stopped the choir, and we started over. I’ll never forget it. The page turner, a lanky pimple faced boy, just watched me suffer through this embarrassment, as did several hundred of my eighth grade peers.

The good thing about this experience is that every time I’ve played since then, I’m able to tell myself, “Self, it can never get worse than that day back in the gym in eighth grade.” I find whenever I’m nervous, self-talk always helps me along.

The things I tell myself usually go like this: What audience could be a more hard-to-impress than 500 New Kids on the Block fans? Nobody is out to get you. Nobody has music in their hands, generally. Nobody is really even paying that much attention to you, as much as you’d like to think. If you’re playing the church offertory (which I think ought to be banned along with all restaurant smoking), people are usually concentrating on trying to unwrap their breath mint discretely more than they care that you just forgot that there was a key change. Really.

So the other night, I’m slated as the background noise to a talented violinist. I looked down to get this tricky part right, and when I looked up, I had no idea where we were. Suddenly, the church sanctuary is filled with teen boy group fans, the pit in my stomach reaches new lows, and my page turner feigns unaccountability.

Thankfully, a little chord theory saved my behind after the initial shock wore off. But instances like last night always set me back a few years. If I break out in I’ll Be Loving You Forever next time I’m up, you’ll know why.

It was January 2002. Eight weeks earlier, I’d delivered my third baby in the span of three years. To say that I was carrying a few extra pounds is like saying that Michael Jackson was cool in the 80’s. Of course I was. I’m not one of those pregnant women that you envy in your secret moments; instead, I’m the one that you pray about, “Please, Lord, don’t let it happen to me that way.”

Tired of it, I committed to 12 weeks of a strict, scheduled exercise and eating regimen. Six days a week (a la Body for Life), I ran, lifted weights, and considered chocolate my worst enemy. I hated every second of it. I read the testimonies of people who claimed that they loved their new way of life. I hated every step of it.

Thankfully, my stubbornness has its useful aspects. I stuck to it and dropped 25 pounds in the first 12 weeks, and continued on to exchange many more fat pounds for muscle pounds. The grueling regimen lasted for 18 months (I was hooked on the energy infusion) and found myself in the best shape of my life. I went from about a 29% body fat to a 15%. I ran 3 miles a day and lifted daily, alternating upper and lower body.

The reason this isn’t bragging is because I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. Two more pregnancies have taken their toll. People actually used to ask me for training advice; nobody does that anymore. I used to have a built-in excuse, but now that Greg isn’t gone 12+ hours a day, I shift the blame to the fact that my oven needs cleaning. The mulch needs fluffing.

God calls us to do hard things. So often the hardest part seems to be where one says, “Yes, Lord. I’ll do that.” As a gung-ho visionary type, I tend to have a lot of excitement for big picture concepts, but a little trouble when it comes to following through with the details that the chosen path requires. Why shucks, yes, I’ll get with a fitness program! (Why shucks, sure, I’ll have a few kids! What? I have clean up throw up at 2 a.m.?!) Around mile two, however, when my legs are dead weight, I start to question the rationality of the decision.

To get myself through, I start the ole self-talk: You’ve ran two; you can run three. Come on, chick, this is only a half hour out of your day. Wimp. For what it’s worth, I feel certain there are more spiritual ways to handle this and don’t necessarily recommend my method.

When life gets rough, most of the hard things are done when nobody is looking. It happens in the dailyness of life, when you choose to say “Yes” to Christ and “No” to your flesh. Does Christ own my heart? Does His faithfulness depend upon my own? Will He help me to love Him more?

There are things in life that are a lot harder than running a few miles. But if we stay the course– believing that God has given us these covenant children to raise up send out so that the nations will worship Him and that He is there to keep our limping legs to the end— we will have very good things to tell ourselves in those hard, daily moments.

He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. ~I Cor. 1:8-9

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. ~Jude 1:24-25

Orange blossoms filled the breezy 70 degree air as we walked the street last night. I feel certain that heaven’s air will be similar, because I can’t think of how it could get better. After our walk, our whole family stayed on the front porch rockers for the evening.

This gave us a good view of the Christmas light lookers. (Remember, we live on our local “Candy Cane Lane,” wherein giant 9-foot-tall plastic, lighted candy canes line the street.) Our next door neighbors– in their 80’s, but my kids help set up the stuff– have arguably the best decked-out house on the island. They’ve got the faded Jesus, the motorized Santa, the inflatable snowmen, the blinking reindeer, the lights, the action. Cars stop at their house, which is at the end of the street in a cul-de-sac. Some people even get out. The only way to escape all the bling is to move.

Tomorrow night, a bonfire will be started in the center of our cul-de-sac and hundreds of cars will file by. We’re having a little neighborhood potluck, and maybe we’ll discuss the case of the stolen inflatable palm trees and pink flamingoes.

As dozens of people drove by last night, they waved and shouted to us, “Merry Christmas!” as we sat outside. We waved and shouted back. Well, some festive lookers hung out their windows and shouted while others chose to wave politely and speak just loud enough. Noticeably absent was, “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings.” No, it was just plain, “Merry Christmassssss!”

Advertisers, politicians, and the liberal mass media should take a trip down a middle class neighborhood in a smallish town where the air is breezy, the cars drive slowly, and everyone says…. “Merry Christmas.”

My side of the family went home after our candlelight Christmas Eve service, and we attended our little street party until very late—waving at the Christmas Eve light lookers, eating hors’ d’oeuvres, and jiving with the neighbors about the neighborhood. One Mercedes cruising lady gushed her thanks to me for such a beautiful display. I accepted the thanks…then feeling guilty, pointed to the house across the way, explaining that I lived there not here. Of course, she thought that house was just beautiful too. Oh well.

My oldest got up at 5 a.m. Christmas morning to put together his Lego set. It only took him 6 hours total, if you don’t count the times he stopped to assemble a Dora scooter and pink little girl gadgets. It’s nice having another guy around who can operate a drill. I’m pretty much set with not ever having to take out the trash again for the rest of my life.

Seems my children are growing up a little. We poked a little fun with my eight-year-old son for playing with the toy girly kitchen, and so he insisted that he needed an apron now—in pink. Right back atcha.

So why do they have to tie down those itty bitty plastic toys with 41 heavy duty, indestructible plastic ties anyway? They’re not only kid-proof, they’re adult-with-a-hunting-knife-and-blow-torch proof. I’m just saying.

Congratulations to our internet blog reading friends, the Petersons, on the birth of their little girl yesterday, Christmas morning. As some of you know, my second-born also shares a birthday with the-Jesus-who-was-really-probably-born-in-April. Our blondie is seven now, and finally, I really do believe that time is moving on.

Now that another Christmas season is over for everyone except the garbage collectors and returns clerks, I feel obligated to offer my post Bah-Humbug commentary.

For several years now, I’ve had The Christmas Humbug. This bug ironically coincides with the fact that since I have a bazillion kids, I’m on the giving end more than the receiving end. Or maybe I’m in a humbug mood just because I’m smarter nowadays and more uncommercialized. I can’t say for sure.

Greg, the optimist in our marriage, frequently quips, “Christmas cheer!” to his realistic better half as she pitches the fourteen-foot-high stack of overpriced, oversexed advertisements in the garbage. “I’m over it!” I protest, but Greg’s Burl Ives’ CD is on repeat performance. Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas? Sure, if you own Wal-Mart.

Thanks to the Wal-Mart generic gift aisle, I own a fancy assortment of funny flavored mustards. It’s stuffed back onto the top shelf in my laundry room, a Christmas Cheer casualty from six years ago. Lava lamps, ch-ch-chia pets, purple mustard wrapped in fluorescent Santa paper—welcome to America! Anyway, I can’t think of anyone I know who likes Honey Flavored Mustard Relish. And besides, how would one find this information out? Excuse me. We just met, I know. But I couldn’t help but notice that you might possibly enjoy this green-tinted Dill Spring Mustard!

I’ve tried to protest the Tickle Me Elmo craze for a couple years now, but I only succeeded in making myself annoying. In the end, I didn’t feel any holier, and I don’t think God thought I was either.

It’s best just to let the batteries die and then not replace them.

But ‘tis the season, really. Except for in mall parking lots, everyone seems to be in a better mood at Christmas time. I talk to strangers that I normally wouldn’t have much to say to. Talking about nothing and anything and everything and something is so much easier during this holiday. Too, when I’m on my front porch in the summer, I usually just wave politely. But now I have something to shout—Merry Christmasssssss!—and it just feels a whole lot better. We are closer with our neighbors now —due to inflatable snowmen.

When it is all said and done, my Christmas Humbug appears to be morphing into something else entirely. I can’t say for certain, but it looks an awful lot like the everyday, ordinary saying that goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, you might as well join ‘em.” Except for the Elmo part.

Christmas cheer.

Back when gas was less than a buck a gallon, kids everywhere ram-rodded around the neighborhood on their bicycles. The cool kids attached a clothespin and playing card to their spokes or rode without their hands on the handlebars. Is that legal anymore?

There’s a rule for everything now. A few years back, a teen in our church received a ticket for riding his bike on the sidewalk on the busiest street in Orlando, SR 436. Apparently you’re dangerous to pedestrians, even if you’re riding along at 8 mph and the cars are whizzing by you at 60 mph.

Another funny law is the one that requires mandatory bicycle helmet use for all children under 16. Since we’re law-abiding citizens, we comply and make our kids wear their helmets. I agree that my wheelie-popping son benefits from one, but does everyone? Maybe helmet use should be tied to speed or number of wheels on your vehicle.