You're a Mean One, Mr (Ms?) Grinch

Anyone who knows me well enough knows how I get around Christmas time. I love the compassion behind Christmas and the enormous amount of love that God showed us by sending His Son. However... and this might sound ridiculously redundant to Ryan's blog, I hate how Christmas has turned into this huge drive for consumerism. The past few years my parents have deemed me the "Scrooge" in our family, but this year I have been trying to focus more on Jesus and compassion for others. Well like any new adventure, I was bound to have my moments and Sunday night was no exception. This is the last week at school (the school I work at... and my school) for the kids before Christmas break and every year the staff participate in a Secret Santa game. This game can be fun under certain condition (ie: you know the person you pick); unfortunately I was not blessed with these conditions.

Now, my secret Santa is a great person and I have had a good time working with him the last few months, but I still don't know what to get him for Christmas gifts (we have to give a small gift every day of the week with little hints as to who we are and then one final big gift at the Christmas party this Friday). So Sunday night I had a bit of a melt-down (if you ask my mom she will tell you I was acting like a two year old but whatever...). I wish I could recount the melt-down but it might be to painful. Pretty much I hated the gifts that I bought (I thought they were really stupid gifts and that I would look like a jerk for being such a crappy gift giver) and I started complaining and saying how much I hate this game... it went on for about an hour.

I have no idea where this came from and I am super embarrassed that it happened, but here's my point (maybe... I hope it makes sense): I got caught up in the gifts and not being good enough for other people and completely forgot what Christmas is all about. It took me until Monday afternoon to finally be reminded (unfortunately by a singing Christmas card...) of what Christmas is really about. It was a Charlie Brown Christmas Card with the part where Linus says what Christmas is really about. It was one of those "Crap! How incredibly stupid was I yesterday. This game isn't that big of a deal and it's not what Christmas is really about" moments. It's sort of a bummer (well, it's actually sort of lame and stupid on my part, but very creative on God's part) that it took a card to get me back on track to celebrating what Christmas is really about. God sure does have a sense of humor...

PS: If you are a fan of Scrubs (Ryan) then you might enjoy this video of Charlie Brown Christmas.