Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas!!

I just wanted to take some time before my family gets here to eat and open presents to share some Christmas related thoughts that I've been pondering on this Christmas season.

First, here's another church doodle for you. On Sunday Ron Ayers preached about the significance of the gifts that the Magi brought. This is how I envisioned the frankincense:

Yes, I know it's cheesy, but I enjoyed it non-the-less. I think I'm going to re-do a little differently in one of my sketchbooks, make a little more subtle (and hopefully less cheesy).

I did the projection for the Christmas service at Manchester a couple of weeks ago so I spent a lot of time hearing Christmas hymns and I have come to the conclusion that we need some new ones. At the very least update the language so I know what I'm singing. It's not that I don't love the hymns we have, I very much do, but sometimes I have no clue what I'm singing. For example, in the song "What child is this?" There is a line that goes "Haste, haste to bring Him laud..." What the heck is laud? How am I suppose to bring it to the babe, the son of Mary if I don't know what it is?
Fun story, last Sunday at Manchester we sang "Silent Night" and when I saw the words " 'Round yon virgin mother and child" and I noticed the apostrophe before the word "round" implying "around." Up until that point I had thought that "round" was describing the pregnant virgin. Who knew?

One last thing I want to comment on is the fact that whenever there is a nativity scene that includes the three wise men, one of them is always black. I don't understand it. Did some historians get together back in the day and say to each other:
"Ya know, I think one of wise men was black."
"Huh, that makes sense."
"Yeah, let's alert the Christian bookstores to let them know."
But it's not just the bookstores, Brandi has a little Charlie Brown nativity set. One of wise men is black. I watched a Christmas episode of Scrubs last night. At one point J.D. had a vision of everyone as part of a nativity scene. Turk was a wise man.


All of that said, I hope you have a great Christmas.