There’s this parking lot at the Provo Towne Center (yes, they really spelled it that way, and yes, it’s just a big shopping mall) where I like to go see movies. On the way to see a movie, if you come from the direction I come from, you have three choices for crossing that parking lot:

1) The inside track, where you really ought to slow the hell down for pedestrians you MANIAC.
2) The outside track, where you drive a good quarter mile out of the way of ANYTHING, and where the 15 mph speed limit is enforced by a broad, hairpin turn that I can take at about 40 if I’m pushing my luck.
3) The lawless route across the middle of the parking lot.

On the way back from a movie this evening (I went out to see the 10:20pm showing of Blade: Trinity. The grade: C-. Wait for the DVD, and then rent it with friends who can help you mock the movie) I decided to take route #3.

Cutting across an empty parking lot at 40mph at 12:20am is surreal. Especially when the lines are all about 45 degrees offset from your direction of travel. As I was crossing, it occurred to me that the adrenaline rush I was experiencing was due to the fact that I was crossing those lines a LOT.

See, as drivers we learn to stay inside the lines, and when we cross the lines we THINK about it first — unless we’re caught in a moment of carelessness, in which case we get adrenaline rushes from the realization that we slipped outside of our allocated stretch of road unconsciously. We spend our ENTIRE BEHIND-THE-WHEEL LIVES trying as hard as we can to stay inside those lines.

Crossing the parking lot forces me to check ALL angles of approach, because the lines can’t protect me. Not only is it POSSIBLE that a car could be coming the other way… it’s LIKELY that they could be coming the other way, and they CERTAINLY aren’t expecting ME to be zipping across their precious line-delimited lane. Hence the adrenaline.

And now, for the profound metaphor: our lives are like this. Mostly we try to stay inside the lines, where our expectations for others and their expectations for us are automatically managed. Sometimes, though, we have to change lanes. At other times (puberty, anyone?) we find ourselves on unpainted road. At still other times we cross entire parking lots. I’m not trying to encourage that kind of behavior, because although there’s growth to be found on all paths, there’s better ways to learn caution than by broadsiding someone in the parking lot.

End of metaphor.

–Howard

I’d like to take a moment to clarify something, lest anyone get absolutely the wrong idea about the Church I attend, per this rant. You see, in the media these days (and the blogosphere is “media”) we focus a lot on the negative because it is NEWS. The positive, the stuff that happens right, and regularly, goes without mention.

The sabbath-day sacrament services I attend each week never leave any doubt as to who we worship and why. Christ is always at the center of things. Yes, it’s unconscionable that even an ancillary, social activity could take place in which that focus is lost, and yes, I’ll be speaking to the Bishopric about it (though I’d be surprised if they weren’t as taken aback as I was), but no, this isn’t a typical sort of thing. And in years past they’ve really floored me with retellings of the Christmas story, but I wasn’t blogging back then.

Just so we’re clear on it. I’m positive that this evening’s event was an aberration that will be gently and lovingly corrected, and my earlier temper tantrum (what you guys read was me holding WAAAAY back) had enough self-righteous hubris in it to fuel the entire Moral Majority for… okay, I’ll be conservative (rimshot)… fifteen or twenty seconds. I’m just glad I didn’t pick up the phone and start talking to people.

–Howard

This isn’t a movie review. This is a rant.

I’m writing this directly after returning from the event I’m ranting about, and I’m writing while still in the full blush of fury. This is a practice with precedent in countless flame-wars, and while it may be ill-advised, I’ll go ahead and feel bad about it later. Right now I’m MAD.

But we’ll start with backstory. That’ll let me cool down a bit.

Five years ago at the Ward Christmas Party (note to those not familiar with Latter-Day Saint Lexicon: Ward=Congregation; about 100 families. In Utah they’ll all be fairly close neighbors, too.) the program was centered around a full-costume re-enactment of the Nativity. It included nativity events peculiar to Mormon beliefs — the revelation that Christ would be born into the world the next day, and the day-night-day during which there was no darkness — but all the rest of it would have been right at home in pretty much any Christian church on the planet. There was a choir singing hymns, a narrator reading the text, and players reciting lines as shepherds, angels, magi, and the rest. There were congregational hymns.

Five years ago Santa was cordoned off in a back room. The kids loved being able to go sit on a pillow-padded lap and whisper Christmas wishes through a fake beard, and while MY kids knew better, they still played along.

That’s right, my kids knew better. We’ve never taught a belief in Santa Claus in my house. We’ve explained that it’s fun to pretend, and that some people get fooled in the pretense. Our policy is a simple one: any faith, any belief system, any mythology taught in my home will be one which Sandra and I believe to be true. No Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy, and no Santa.

Santa doesn’t come to my house, but in years past when we’ve had more to share, we’ve signed gifts to others as if he did it. “Secret Santa” is redundant, and “Sub for Santa” is more so as far as I’m concerned. If you’re going to Kringle somebody’s front porch with a dinner they badly need and gifts they can’t afford for each other, THEN you pretend to be Santa, and everybody knows (or SHOULD know) that a neighbor who doesn’t want his or her good deeds touted has done a good deed here.

Okay, that’s the backstory.

This year the Ward Christmas Party began, as usual, with a buffet dinner. There were decorations on the tables, and Patches fished the gumdrops out of them one at a time, carefully sucked the sugar off of them, and then with great consideration for others put them carefully back. I got worried, though… all the decorations around the room — ALL of them — were straight out of the Polar Express mythos, which is the Santa myth modified to make grown-ups feel guilty for not playing pretend anymore. In fairness, grownups SHOULD feel guilty for not playing pretend, and for becoming unimaginative, and especially for not playing with their kids. But Santa ain’t all that, and the Polar Express story only works for me on the “I should play with legos with the kids more often” level. As a metaphor for belief in Christ, it falls flat on it’s cherubic little face, loses the bell from its pocket, and then expires alone in a snowdrift trying to sell matches.

As I was saying (huff, huff, huff), I walked around and saw not ONE bit of Christ-centered Christmas decor. No manger. No angels. No camels. There was a little bit of gold trim here and there, but mister Frankincense and mister Myrrh never made it into the building. There were no donkeys, no magi, no shepherds, and no sheep. You know all those tasteless jokes about “don’t do this because it makes the baby Jesus cry?” Well, kids, knock yourselves out. Baby Jesus couldn’t make it this year.

I had to stop for a reality check: I’m in a CHURCH, at a CHURCH SPONSORED CHRISTMAS PARTY, and I can’t find the Baby Jesus ANYWHERE. Even the music was lacking — I enjoy Christmas songs about snow, and bells, and even sleigh rides because winter is fun. But the songs that really WORK for me are the ones about redemption, about peace on Earth, about glory to God in the highest.

The program began, and it was a reading of The Polar Express, with players on stage, a train that rolled around the room, and good friends of mine playing the parts of Santa and the Narrator. I was very nearly physically ill. It ended none too soon, and then my oldest began to cry because they’d just announced the age limit for getting to ride on the train, and she was too old. Fortunately we managed to sneak her onto the train by explaining that a) she was very very sad, and b) she had to hold Patches so he could ride.

The kids waited in line to sit with Santa (my good friend Scotty), and their reaction was predictable. I could read their thoughts right on their little faces: Who is this guy in the funny suit? How does this game go? What do I need to say to him to get one of those candy canes he’s doling out?

We got candy canes, we got little sleighbells (“you know what sleighbells are for, don’t you kids? They’re a high-frequency emitter whose sound doesn’t get damped much by snow, so sleighs don’t crash into each other in downtown snowstorms. Not that anybody was dumb enough to go out in a storm like that back then. Now put it back in your pocket.”), and we got some cookies. We came home. I came in here to write.

I know full well that Christ wasn’t born “in the bleak midwinter” as the carol goes. The best guesses at his actual birthday (based on taxation practices, per the story) put it sometime in the spring. Modern revelation (more mormon stuff. Pipe down, you) puts it at April 6th of the year 0 AD. The “merging” of Christmas with the Winter Solstice is a matter of historical fact. The wiccans, gaians, druids, and pagans in the crowd are welcome to a bit of righteous indignation for this. I note the passage of the solstices and equinoxes (equinoci? equinoxi?) myself, and while I don’t do any zodiac magic in the buff, I am happy that the days are (for instance) going to be getting longer any day now.

In short, I can understand, in these modern times, how the Christian meaning of Christmas can get shuffled off to one side, or even lost. I’m okay with that in a shopping mall. I’m absolutely NOT okay with that in Christian Church.

(As a quick aside to those who continue to claim that Mormons are not Christians, and who are about to object to me calling a Mormon Church edifice a Christian Church: Before you say anything, have you been listening to any of this? Go beat up on SANTA, not ME.)

Bah, humbug. I’m still angry, but I’ve cooled down a bit. I was very careful not to speak my mind at the party, because the participants obviously put a LOT of time into that production. It was also obvious that they meant for it to be special for the kids. These people meant well, and deserve more than my scorn. That said, it STILL breaks my heart to know that they put all that effort into what was basically no more than a little carnival for the kids. How could THAT MANY PEOPLE all unreservedly charge down what seems to so obviously be the WRONG PATH. It’s like they all climbed on that stupid train. “It only goes to the North Pole and back. Sorry, no stops in Bethlehem. No, the Baby Jesus doesn’t ride this train. Here, kid, have a bell. Maybe if you fall off the train and get lost in the snow somebody can find you before you fall asleep and die.”

–Howard

Hey, y’all.

If you’ve been looking for Schlock Mercenary link banners with which to adorn your website, I’ve created so many you’ll not be able to choose.

They’re posted in the Keenspot and Nightstar forums, here and here.

Thanks,
–Howard

p.s. My third post on each of those forums now includes a javascript for rotating the banners. I’d paste it in here, but escape-coding all that HTML for LiveJournal would be a real pain.