Bald-Headed Babes

By Steph Prichard –

The taillights of the car ahead of me suddenly flashed red. Ahhh, clever me for maintaining that traffic-manual-safe-space between us! I braked to a successful stop inches from the car’s bumper. Not so the guy behind me. Wham. My head lurched forward, then back, then a second time as I rammed the car in front of me after all.

The guy who had now upped my insurance premium got out of his car and hastened to the passenger side of mine. As I rolled down the window, his mouth fell open and his eyes widened. What? Did I look like I was going to bite off his head?

He swallowed hard. “I w-wanted to make sure you’re all right. Do you need anything? I’ve called in the accident.”

Aw, what a nice guy. Sorta. I assured him I was okay, and he sped to the car in front of me to check on its driver.

Traffic on the left slowed to a crawl so that passengers could stare into our three-car zoo. Not one to spurn an on-stage appearance, I hammed it up. I smiled, waved, held my hands palms up and shrugged my shoulders. I got the same mouth-gaping, eye-widening response the young driver had given me.

I decided I’d better look in the mirror. Oh my. My head was as bald as a boiled egg. I had literally flipped my wig into the back seat. I reached back and retrieved my, ahem, hair, put it on, and got out of the car. This would definitely go to the top of my Most Embarrassed Moment list. At least I could explain to the young driver that I was receiving chemo treatments and had lost my hair. But all those spectators driving by? Bwahaha, no wonder they had looked stunned. Some bald-headed babe was making quite a fool of herself!

Bald-headed babies are cute, though, aren’t they? And isn’t this the season for The Babe? To the world, the little guy in the manger is a comforting image. What would they think if they looked at what He “grew up” to be? Here’s how Jesus is described in Revelation 19:12-16: “His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns…. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The
Word of God.…  Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations.… He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His
robe and on His thigh a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords.”

Ouch. The cuddling factor is definitely gone.

For Christians, the babe in the manger is the long-awaited seed promised in Genesis 3:15.  But we recognize that what we celebrate at Christmas is only the beginning of the fulfillment. The King of kings and Lord of lords is coming again, and next time it won’t be as a bald-headed babe.

The 12 Days of Christmas

By Kathi Macias –

I love Christmas. In addition to the wonderful celebration of Christ’s birth on earth, I love the feel of Christmas, the sounds of it, the smells of it—and above all, the tastes of it.

And that’s the problem. As much as I love Christmas, I also fear it. It’s a sort of love-hate relationship, as I wrestle with sugarplums dancing in my head (though I haven’t a clue what sugarplums are!) and calories not just dancing but taking up permanent residence on my mid-section.

Seriously, I go into the infamous twelve-days-of-Christmas season (which really lasts the entire month of December and beyond for me) each year determined not to overeat. I never last beyond the middle of the month because that’s when the need to bake takes over.

“Aren’t you going to make sugar cookies with sprinkles for the guys at work?” my husband asks.

I love sugar cookies with sprinkles—and it’s for the guys at work! How can I say no? The first day of Christmas has officially arrived.

No sooner do I finish those cookies than my husband says, “It would really be great if you could add some walnut brownies to the plate—you know, for the guys at work.”

Yeah, I know. Those poor guys must be starved. One Texas-sized batch of brownies, coming up! And day two of Christmas is under way.

Day three, and I’m determined to eat salad—a spritz of lemon juice in place of dressing. (After all, I had to taste those sugar cookies and brownies to make sure they were okay before I sent them to the guys at work, right? Now I have to make up for it.) But then I see the note on the bulletin board at the clubhouse where we live, asking for donations of pound cake for the annual delivery to the nursing home. How selfish can I be? Some of those elderly residents might not get cake except once a year at Christmas! Who am I to deprive them? (On the plus side, I was so full from sampling pound cake and licking the bowl and beaters at the end of the day that I skipped the salad entirely.)

The fourth day of Christmas requires peanut butter cookies for a neighbor, while day five entails pumpkin pies. The sixth day—halfway there!—has me trying my hand at apple strudel (one of my favorites, so I make two—one for me and one for everyone else). The fudge on day seven nearly sends me over the sugar edge, so I tone it down a bit and make bread on day eight (which, of course, must be eaten warm with lots of butter). By day nine I try making a jelly roll. If the first one turns out crooked, I just eat it and make another one. (Practice makes perfect!)

Who am I making all these treats for, you might ask? The guys at work? The nursing home residents? Absolutely not! They got their goodies, and I blame them for getting me started on this baking frenzy anyway. I’m now going to all this effort just to fill the freezer “in case company drops by.” And in all honesty, we have grandkids who can eat everything in that overloaded freezer in one sitting, so my reasoning isn’t completely faulty.

I devote days ten and eleven to various kinds of candy, all of which are delicious, but by day twelve I draw the line. “No more baking,” I declare. “No cookies, candies, pies, or cakes. I’m done.”

At that point last year, my husband smiled. “That’s great. You deserve a day off. And here, I got you something special while I was in town yesterday.” Tears popped into my eyes as he laid the three-pound box of chocolates on my lap (a lap which was considerably larger than it had been before the onset of the twelve days of Christmas), and he was touched at my emotional reaction.

“Wow,” he said. “I knew you liked candy, but I didn’t expect you to be so happy you’d cry about it.”

Indeed. Once again Christmas had moved me to tears. The next move would have to be to the gym to work off the effects of all that baking. But I’d learned to survive the twelve days of Christmas, and I suppose I’ll do the same this year.

Have a blessed Christmas, dear friends!

What Twisted Mind Thought Up Soap?

By Carol Barnier –

Have you ever stopped to think about how weird it is that we have soap?Think about it. That wondrous little bar of cleansing magic that you hold in your hands in the shower means that once upon a time, some bizarre mind had to come up with a truly strange set of steps.

“Hey,” mutters the wild-haired man staring at the fire. “I know what! Let’s try pouring water through all the leftover ashes from our previous fires.” His eyes squint in concentration as he works out the details in his head. “Then, when the water drains out, instead of being frightened by it—since it can literally peel the skin from your hands (no kidding, this is where we get Lye)—we’ll just put on little hazmat mittens and gather it up by the bucketful.”

Others around the fire look suspiciously at the wild man. Is he serious? Is there a village somewhere whose idiot has gone missing? But most importantly, what would he be planning with such a corrosive liquid? With that thought, they all took three steps backward.

“Don’t leave me now!” he bellows. “It gets better! We’ll take all those buckets of nasty caustic lye and we’re gonna mix it up with gallons of fat that rose to the surface of the water we used to boil up the butchered cows. Isn’t this great?”

At this point the crowd began scanning the ground for excessive empty wineskins. Either that or they were looking for something with which to protect themselves.

“But wait!” he blathers. “This is where it verges on miraculous! We’re going to cook the oily fat with the blistering lye, and when it globs up, we’ll cut into chunks, rub it on our bodies, add some fresh water and wa la!  We’ll. . .be. . .CLEAN!”

He grinned in obvious delight. Right up until the point he was thrown into leg irons.

Seriously. Those are the steps in making soap. Who would possibly have put this together? I submit to you that no one could have made such strange leaps of logic. It requires too many leaps of logic and several
counterintuitive actions. So then, I pondered. Where did the idea come from? Where in nature would one find a natural mix of water, ash, animal fat and finally, at the end of the whole process, fresh water. And that’s when it hit me. The Old Testament. Or more specifically, the ash mounds from the period of animal sacrifices. Think about it. The rains washed down over the ash mounds, naturally mixing the resulting lye with the cooked fat from the burned animals.  Don’t you imagine that it didn’t take long for the local washer women to figure out that the clothes were cleaned more easily downstream rather than up?

I think this is genius. In fact, I think this is God’s God-ness at its best. A little science, a little spiritual lesson and a great big dollop of humor. You may think that God came up with the sacrificial system to get us ready to understand the eventual coming of Christ. And that’s true. But I also suspect He got tired of us being so filthy, smiled that God-smile and decided to help us along. The metaphor works. Filthy bodies cleaned by the sacrifice of so many animals. Filthy hearts made clean by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. And God, as always, our provider.

Christmas Pageant Bloopers

By Emily M. Akin-

Christmas is coming! Rehearsals for nativity plays should be in full swing. While most plays are memorable, what most audiences remember is not excellence. No—it’s the bloopers that stick in people’s minds. Allow me to share some of my favorites.

Fallen Angel: I was one of three twelve-year-old girls who played the angels in our church play. We wore white skirts fashioned from sheets, secured with safety pins. On top, we wore white blouses under white choir robes. Our wings were white cardboard with gold tinsel glued on. Similar tinsel formed our halos. Waiting for our cue, we hid out at the head of the stairs that descended into the choir loft.

The spotlight swung in our direction. I descended first, stopping on the bottom step. The other angels occupied the higher steps behind me. We didn’t have to speak. We just waited, looking angelic, until the reading and singing were done.

When the spotlight went off, we turned to go back up to “heaven.” I stepped on the hem of my “skirt” and struggled to right myself. I thought I was OK because I didn’t fall. However, I soon realized my skirt was on the floor. Fortunately, I was wearing a white slip underneath, and the spotlight was off. I was mortified, but my fellow angels thought this was devilishly funny.

Where Is Messiah? Remember Simeon, the man who had waited so long for the Messiah? Our pastor devised a skit about Simeon for use in the evening service after Christmas. A family with a new baby played Jesus, Mary, Joseph, while he played Simeon. The “holy family” was to go through the basement underneath the sanctuary and enter from the back. The pastor planned to cue the spotlight by saying, “Where is Messiah?” Too bad, the basement lights were off. Baby Jesus’ entourage had to hunt for the light switch before making their way through the basement. Simeon said, “Where is Messiah?” The spotlight turned on cue. No one was there.

Simeon ad-libbed, “Oh, Lord, I am an old man. I’ve waited soooo long for Messiah! Surely, the time is now. Where is Messiah?” Still nothing. After a few more ad-libs, Baby Jesus and family finally appeared in the spotlight. Simeon exclaimed, “Thank you, Lord. Messiah is here.” While some stifled their giggles, others were thanking the Lord along with the pastor.

FIRE! As a teenager, I played piano for the children’s choir. One Christmas, the adult choir presented a musical program. The children were to sing a couple of songs after all the characters had arrived at the manger. The piano was an upright, and the top was heavily decorated with greenery and real candles with real flames. I played a little “traveling music” for the kids to get in place. So far, so good.

Once the singing started, I was so engrossed that I didn’t notice that the greenery was on fire. One of the ushers rushed down to blow out the
candles and beat out the conflagration. All eyes were on the amateur fire fighter, but the children and I kept performing like we were the only show in town. Since then, I balk at candles on the piano. If decorators insist on greenery, it must be fake—and definitely fireproof.

Why do we remember the bloopers? I think it’s because we know everyone wants to do it right. Because we’re human, we make mistakes. We forgive the bloopers because we know God has forgiven us. That’s what the coming of the Baby Jesus is all about, isn’t it?

Beck the Halls

By Lynn Rebuck –

I like Christmas music, but starting in early November it’s omnipresent: it’s in every store, in every elevator, and on every station, including talk radio (I fully expected Glenn to release a “Beck the Halls” Christmas CD).

As I searched the mall for an omnipresent (that’s the one gift that I could purchase in bulk for everyone) recently, I heard blaring from the speaker systems of three different stores an unintended medley of clashing carols:  “Silent Rudolph the Red-Nosed Manger.”  It was more than my fried-by-“Feliz Navidad” brain could handle.

I sought sanctuary in a nearby synagogue to escape the cacophony of carols. I hummed “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel” to soothe and center myself.  I don’t mind the holiday music, but it is so pervasive that it is affecting my every thought and intruding into all of my family’s conversations.

The other night I could have sworn that my daughter approached me and told me of her plans to go out with her adolescent friends by saying the phrase “We three teens of orient are….”  Maybe I’m just hearing things.

“Do you hear what I hear?” inquired one of my children the night before Christmas.

“Is it the little drummer boy?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“You know,” I said, “I heard the bells on Christmas Day.”

“That’s nice, Mom.”

“Their old familiar carols play,” I continued, making conversation.

“Mom, you’d better lay off the eggnog.”

“Can I have a friend over?” my son continued, standing next to a kid I hadn’t noticed before.

“What child is this?”

“Chris.”

“Which one is he? The Drummer’s little boy?”

“Funny, Mom.  He’s the Taylor’s kid.”

“Joy to the world,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Is that a yes?”

“What’s that smell?” interrupted another child.

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” I mumbled.  “Or it could be dinner.”

“Mom, can I go on a date with Paul?” asked my eldest.

“The little drummer boy?”

“He’s a percussionist in a rock band, Mom. And so what if he’s short, I just won’t wear heels.”

“When will you be back?”

“I’ll be home for Christmas,” she said.

I nodded and reached for more nog.

As she walked out the door, she called over her shoulder “You can count on me.”

“Did the box from Amazon arrive?” asked my son.

“Yes, it came upon a midnight clear.”

“I didn’t know UPS delivered that late.”

“’Tis the season, you know.”

You know, the three wise men were the first midnight madness shoppers, and they didn’t have any criss-crossing carols to contend with.

I am now in a 12 Steps of Christmas Recovery Program. Fa-la-la-la-la, la- la-la-Joy!

© 2011 Lynn Rebuck

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