actually, the song goes…

…”sleep in heavenly peace“

not, “sleep in heavenly trees“…

(which is where I found Baby Jesus last night in the nativity set).

no Christmas is complete without…

…music!

I recently lamented to my family on the lack of good Christmas songs we have around our place these days. Ones without swear words, anyways. And ones that aren’t sung by “chipmunks” or that don’t refer to grandma getting run over by a reindeer.

After a bit of research, I have compiled this collection, which I downloaded from iTunes yesterday. That was my first iTunes (or any other music service) download. Hooray. Now I’m hip. I have a cell phone AND and iTunes account! Here they are — comments in italics

1. Peace – Norah Jones – nice
2. Silent Night – Lifehouse – nice, sounds a little ‘Christian’ (you can interpret that however you like)
3. O Holy Night – Tracy Chapman – not too “over dramatized” like the song usually is
4. I Saw Three Ships – Sting – do a little jig, it’s Sting!
5. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings – Barenaked Ladies – one of the best versions of traditional Christmas songs out there
6. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing – Jewel – kind of “mall-y”, but simple and nice
7. Angels We Have Heard On High – Sonic Flood – sounds ‘Christian’, but I like this carol
8. Joy to the World – Bebo Norman – also sounds ‘Christian’, but has a really worshipful quality to it that I love
9. O Come O Come Emmanuel – Sufjan Stevens – cool version of a great song
10. Born in Bethleham – Natalie Merchant – super-groovin’…way fun!
11. Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing – Sufjan Stevens – never associated this one with Christmas before, but it was on his Christmas album and I love this song, so its my new favorite Christmas carol
12. Little Drummer Boy – Aly & AJ – the kids LOVE this one…upbeat version of the song
13. Christmas – U2 – its U2, what can you say

Additional recommendations, anyone?

so excited

I can’t tell you how excited I am for Advent to begin tomorrow. For one, I hope to be done with all the Christmas-related projects that are not-as-fun and for two, I am really excited for what I hope to gain from the season. Like all the stuff I asked for. OK, not that stuff. I’m going to be doing word studies on my words that I picked for each week, and then I’ll be reading in…Matthew, I think, to see how these concepts play out specifically in the that (or whatever other one I pick) gospel. I love, love, love that I have this anticipation for the season and a hope/expectation for spiritual insight and growth. I know God usually doesn’t do what we expect….He usually does more.

If anyone wants to join me, I would love it! Once again, here’s my plan:
Hope/Anticipation (concerning Jesus’ first and second coming) -December 2
Peace – December 9
Joy – December 16
Love – December 23
Like I said, I’ll be focusing on Jesus bringing these things to us (by reading in the gospels) and hoping to do some minor study on the meanings/uses of these words. Other ideas you have would be quite welcome. If you want to join me let me know somehow and maybe we can even arrange to have a couple actual, real-live conversations on the matter.

Any thoughts, suggestions, resources you might offer that might enrich this season would be fantastic. Let me know about them!

declaration of christmas grinch independence – the advent plan

Until a couple weeks ago, Advent meant “countdown to Christmas”. A countdown that preferably included chocolate.

My most memorable Advent-with-chocolate was at George Fox, when an aunt sent me a cute Advent calendar with little chocolates for each day. She had no idea what this meant to me, a college student who ate nothing but lettuce for three months because a) all the other food was grosser and b) I was deathly afraid of the Freshman 15 (obviously I didn’t have the same fear of the Pregnancy 40). Haunnah and I took turns opening days and eating chocolate. The chocolate turned out to have the consistency and flavor of a brown crayon, but that did not mean there was any lack of temptation to jump ahead.

Advent, though, like I mentioned before, actually means “coming” instead of “chocolately countdown to Christmas”. This must mean that the people who started the tradition didn’t know about chocolate. Either that, or they had a certain insight into the nature of people and knew we’d need a whole season to remember and celebrate that Jesus came like He said He would the first time…and that He will come a second time too.

I don’t actually know hardly anything about Advent. What I learned, I pretty much got from Wikipedia’s Advent entry. I would like to learn more, but this first year, I wanted to keep it easy. Which means “what you don’t know, make up”. But so far, this is the plan:

• focus each week on one of the traditional faith ideas associated with the season
• do an advent wreath
• read The Advent Book , written by some friends of my Aunt Elaine
• open a gift each Sunday evening
• have at least one activity planned for the week, which may or may not be associated with that week’s concept

For example:

HOPE/ANTICIPATION
Week 1, beginning December 2
Focus: Giving hope — physical, emotional, spiritual — to those who need it
Gift: family games…for…
Activity: family game night with some friends… someday I’d like to add a “hope giving” activity, but this year, I don’t think it’ll happen…any suggestions gladly accepted

PEACE
Week 2, beginning December 9
Focus: Giving peace
Gift: quiet, restful gifts like books, CDs or movies
Activity: cozy family Christmas movie night

JOY
Week 3, beginning December 16
Focus: Giving Joy
Gift: this will be the “something they actually want” gift…though, I think we’ll still keep it small
Activity: Kids’ Birthday Party for Jesus — invite friends over for a “birthday party”, with the idea being to a) share joy (kids love parties!) b) share Jesus (I’m thinking this has potential to be an outreach thing, a little overwhelmed to try to go there this year) and c) give parents a break for a couple hours.

LOVE
Week 4, beginning December 23
Focus: Giving Love
Gift: Kids exchange gifts with each other — demonstrating that buying and giving a gift is a way of showing love
Activity: “St. Nic stockings” – read a story about St Nic and have their stockings be a place where they get money to give to others in need (they get to choose where to give it…not IF they give it…) — many organizations have a Christmas Alternative Giving catalogue where people can buy chickens, vocational training, food, etc for people in developing countries. This activity might also make sense during HOPE week, so we might move it…

So there it is. My Grand Plan for Advent Fun. That will probably change a great deal before it comes, and even more over the years. In fact, it might not even ever happen again. We’ll see how this year goes.

I would LOVE ideas and suggestions on this. At this point this whole thing is pretty idealistic, but I wanted to start somewhere. And for the first time, I feel like I’m doing Christmas the way I want to be doing it. For way too long, I felt like so much of it was so contrary to who I am and what I believe. At least this way I’ll have enough going on that I won’t have time to worry about everything and everyone!

declaration of christmas grinch independence – the part where I summarize what I learned in my quest for a joyful Christmas

I am really excited for the Christmas season this year. I feel proactive and energized instead of reactive and “come on Michelle, pull it together and put on a smile”. I might feel differently in December, but for now I am really glad I was challenged to face my Christmas frustration head on so I could come to some resolution. Two basic parts helped make this happen:

ONE – MAKE a list, then make nice

One of the best pieces of advice I found on dealing with Christmas was to make a list of what you like and what you don’t like. And then don’t do what you don’t like. Or make what you don’t like into something that you do like.

Here were some of the things I like about Christmas:

• having a Christmas tree
• getting Christmas letters from people I don’t hear from often (which means I have to send them too, which is a bit of a pain, but its one of those pains that is worth it)
• festiveness and traditions and memory-making
• family time
• being forced to spend time thinking about the people I love via the gift giving process (as in, giving gifts is fun and a way to show love, but its not something I’d make time for if it wasn’t expected of me)
• celebrating Jesus

Here were some things I really, really DON’T like (you can FEEL the love in these words…):

• buying crap because I’m supposed to
• cheap stuff
• frenzied shopping
• too much sugar (the entire month is a sugar crash – no wonder I’m depressed)
• crowds — grumpy crowds
• too busy at Christmas time for my immediate family that we don’t have any traditions (explanation: we do Christmas Eve with my family, Christmas morning with Brian’s, and Jam’s birthday the next day, so it feels like a present marathon and we have no tradition for when we open gifts just our family)
• trying to make Christmas spiritual

Lots of these things I don’t like are easily fixable. For instance, this year I’m making more of an effort to give gifts that don’t feed the consumerism monster, I plan to not set foot in WalMart or the mall after Thanksgiving, don’t even look at the newspaper ads (they make me grumpy and greedy and I am both those things enough without the help of ads), don’t make (or eat) so many cookies, and have a plan for the season instead of just letting it happen.

My big realization of this exercise was that I wanted to focus on the SEASON and not the DAY — as in, I want to enjoy the entire Christmas season instead of running around frantically trying to put together a perfect Christmas Day.

TWO – LOOK at history

1. Thou Shalt Party

God invented parties. He commanded them, in fact. These parties were big. Lots of food and drink that lasted a long time. So I found it is not necessarily “more spiritual” to simplify Christmas to the point of no gifts or fancy food.

I also learned that these parties had meaning – they were designed to remind the Israelites (adults and children) of who God is, what He had done, and how they were to relate to Him. That doesn’t mean the parties were 100% spiritual experiences, but they had spiritual foundations and were to serve as spiritual reminders.

2. Tradition!

I am glad I grew up in an evangelical church. However, I’ve discovered there is some pretty meaningful stuff in the practices of churches that have a more liturgical tradition, like looking at the lives of the saints (like St. Nicholas, since we’re on the Christmas theme) and the church seasons (like Advent).

So I was mixing my “focus on the season, not the day” and “Christmas should be fun, but also have spiritual structure” together and trying to come up with this really innovative and creative way to do things, when I found… Advent. Which has been celebrated for a long, long time. And much more spiritual minds have influenced it, which means it is way better than I anything I could have come up with.

Basically the point of Advent, which means “coming”, is to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ while commemorating the first. It is celebrated differently in different churches and countries, and like all traditions, can become a meaningless religious practice…but its a crazy good idea rich with meaning, so I’m going to adopt it. For now.

Next, I will share what all this looks like in terms of our December plans. I know you are dying to find out…