Category Archives: Holiday Post

Apr24

Habeas Corpus

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Today is Easter Sunday.

Today, Christians the world over celebrate the most important event in the history of the world — Jesus Christ’s rising from the dead. The Resurrection is not only the most important event in history, but also the most ridiculed event in history as well. To adherents of other religions, including atheism and its current priestly triumvirate of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, the idea that a man can — and did — rise from the dead is mythology akin to Prometheus being bound in the Caucasus Mountains or Odin and his offspring riding down the Rainbow Bridge from Asgard to fight Ragnarok.

From time to time I have wrestled with doubts over the veracity of the Resurrection accounts, but one compelling and unanswerable detail has nailed me to my faith in Christ as surely as He was nailed to a Roman cross. If Jesus of Nazareth did not raise from the dead, where is His body?

The founders of other religions of the world are accounted for. Gautama the Buddha was cremated and containers of his ashes given as relics to shrines. Confucius is interred in Qufu, China, his hometown. The Mohammad lies beneath  the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina.

But wither the Carpenter of Nazareth? Where are the remains of He whom Pilate, a Roman provincial governor not prone to flights of superstition, named “REX IVDAEORVM” ? Where is the body of The Christ, the Holy One of God?

First, Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who died on a real cross at a real point in time in the very real and verifiable Roman province of Judea in or about 33 AD. Forget about “the search for Jesus” or “the historical Jesus”. We have the Gospels and they say He lived. We have Josephus and Philo and they say He lived. Still people want to dispute Jesus’ existence. To them I say, was Julius Caesar real? Prove it. Less contemporary material exists mentioning the would-be Roman emperor than mentions Christ by a magnitude of ten yet no one doubts Caesar’s life and deeds. Why must Christ’s life be called a myth? If we are going to play these reindeer games, let’s all play by the same rules for all historical persons.

So, where is His body?

The Resurrection DESTROYED the Roman Empire. It made Jews, sadly, a cast out and hunted people. Logic dictates that if either the Romans or the Jews had knowledge or possession of Jesus’ body, as soon as Christians like Peter started preaching in the streets, these men would have gone to a tomb, carted out Jesus’ body, unwrapped it and said, “Here is your ‘Savior'”.

Christianity would have come to a swift end.

But it didn’t.

Through reading I have settled on two unassailable facets of Roman life. First, the Romans were excellent record keepers. Second, the Romans were excellent killers. The Romans in Palestine who crucified Jesus didn’t “misplace” the body and they didn’t take Jesus down “alive” from the cross so that He “got better” then showed up later on. I don’t have the time or space to shoot those two arguments against the Resurrection as full of holes as they deserve to be, but luckily others have done that yeoman’s work in my place. My suggestion is to start with the thin book by Josh McDowell titled More than a Carpenter if you want to start exploring the arguments over the centuries around Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I must warn you, though, before you undertake such a journey. Many extremely passionate and intelligent men have set out to debunk Christianity’s claim that Jesus rose from the dead. None have succeeded and many have become believers and followers of Christ in the process.

Will you?

Love y’all and Happy Easter.

Why are you seeking the living among the dead? He is Risen, just as He said He would.

Feb14

Three Lessons on Valentines Day

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I’ve been sitting here with Budge as another Valentines Day wends its way to conclusion . . . at least here in the Eastern US Time Zone. Any of y’all who may read this out on the Left Coast still have time to make at least SOME last-minute plans. We’ve never been great fans of Cupid’s Day. Budge worked at a florist shop for a little over a year so if I even mention bringing her a dozen roses, I get the “withering stare.” She took a break from her diet and we had a nice supper together.

Still, not many days evoke the humorous and the serious from my memory quite like Valentines Day. I taught high school English in a rural, blue-collar high school for ten years and Valentines Day always produced a few surprises. I remember one young lad who began coming to school dressed in khakis and button down oxfords instead of his former ratty t-shirts and blue jeans with the dip can ring on the back pocket. I held him after class one day near Valentines and questioned him on the quite noticeable change in his attire. He said, “Coach, it’s the strangest thing. Ever since me and ____ started dating, she’s taken some of her check from her after school job and bought me clothes. She knows my size and everything. Does that mean she’s got it bad for me, Coach?”

Now, as an aside, please remember that this was a rural high school. Graduation was nowhere near assured for many of these students. I had several walk across the stage as first generation diploma bearers during my tenure. Also, college was somewhat of an undreamed of luxury for this hard-working community. That meant that high school romances were quite often precursors to a married life. The girls especially seemed to realize this more than the boys and they would lay claim to the best of the crop of young men by the junior prom. So that meant my young buddy’s question was not unfounded.

I smiled at him and said, “Son, learn something from me right now that’s never going to be on a test. None of those clothes, right down to those nice new ropers you’ve got on has a THING to do with you!” Seeing his quizzical expression, I continued on, “Nope, it’s ALL about her. See, you have become an ‘accessory’ now. You are just like a handbag or a bracelet. It’s your job in life to make sure SHE looks good when y’all walk down the hall or the mall together. You ever been to a jewelry store and seen all the diamonds?” He nodded. “Well, then. Think of yourself as the black velvet cloth her diamond lies on. You make her shine.” That seemed to register with him so I asked him what he’d gotten his new beauette for Valentines Day. His reply was one that would run ice water through any “attached” man’s veins.

He said, “She told me not to get her anything. She’s real easy on me like that.”

I said, “Son, tell me you got her SOMETHING — card, candy, SOMETHING!”

“No, Coach, I told you she told me not to.”

I let him in on the secret. “Son, lesson two for the day. When a girl y’all’s age says, ‘oh, don’t get me anything’ she means she’s not going to TELL you what to get her. This is the test of how well you know her. She’s going to find out now just how well you’ve been paying attention on y’all’s dates and stuff.”

He looked stricken, “But she SAID . . .” I cut him off, “Son, I know what she said and that’s just it. She’s testing you. Now you can take her at face value and not get her anything and pay the price, or you can hit up Wally World and get her a teddy bear and a cute card.”

Nodding, he asked me, “but, Coach, why didn’t she just SAY all that?”

I gave him the last lesson for the day, “Son, she’s a female. Females are smarter than us. That’s all I know.”

He did get the teddy bear and cute card and about four years later I had the pleasure of officiating at their wedding.

It’s the truth, ladies. Y’all are just smarter than us.

Love all y’all and keep those feet clean!

Dec26

I’m Dreaming of a white . . . Boxing Day?

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Snow in the Southland is a rare commodity. Snow when people actually WANT it, like around the holidays, is nigh upon unheard of in these parts.

December 26, 2010

So, when the flakes started falling about sundown last night most of the grownups around me were just as giddy and giggly as the few children in attendance. Greenville County, South Carolina was experiencing the first white Christmas since 1963, according to our local weathermen.

The snow fell throughout the night and we were greeted by a blinding white landscape this morning. Of course, the Sun has peeked his head out now so what’s left isn’t likely long for this world.

Snow brings out a certain special madness among Southerners. We so seldom get a simple pretty snow that we aren’t quite certain how to take them when they come along. Here, our winter weather of choice is ICE. This region has been smacked by four big ice storms in my memory. The first big one I remember was in 1988. The Monday we went back to school from Christmas break, it started snowing and icing. We left school by lunchtime that Monday and didn’t return until Wednesday of the FOLLOWING week. We missed seven school days and got no spring break that year.

My sophomore year in college saw a big snow, too. I learned a very important lesson in that storm; education majors should not get into snowball fights with engineering majors — especially if said engineering majors have access to their engineering lab. Surgical tubing and some Gore-tex pouches will launch a slushball nearly 100 yards with enough energy to take a guy completely off a bicycle. The funniest part of that particular day, however, was the two foreign students from South Africa. They’d NEVER seen snow and were convinced the sky was falling and the world was coming to an end. After we bopped them with a few good snowballs and served both of them some homemade snow ice cream, they started to come around.

It was the ice storm of 2002 that caused the most damage of any winter weather I remember. We got three or four inches of ICE. This stuff had just enough snow mixed in for color. Ice isn’t like snow in any way shape or form other than being cold. Four inches of ice is HEAVY; heavy enough to bring down main power lines — the big boys on the steel towers, not just the smaller residential stuff. It decimated trees — especially pines and other evergreens that are soft woods and woefully unsuited for weight bearing. By the time the storm lifted, most of Upstate SC was out of power. Our neighborhood went five days in the dark and some of the more remote places, like Glassy Mountain up in Pickens, went a full two weeks without power. I saw crews from as far away as Alabama working on the lines. It was a serious mess, but ever since then, we haven’t had a major outage, mainly because all the trees and limbs threatening power lines came down in that storm!

So I hope all my northern readers will forgive me my excitement over snow. I realize y’all get more snow in a day than I’ve seen in my lifetime, but we don’t laugh at you when you can’t move in our July humidity, so you could go easy on us and our poor winter driving skills!

Now go out and have some fun in what’s left of the white stuff and when you come in, get those feet dried off and warm. I don’t want anyone catching his or her death over this Christmas break!

Love y’all and y’all take care 🙂

Dec25

What I Want for Christmas

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Today is Christmas and everyone who survived the rush and crush of people are gathered around trees or tables with friends and family swapping stories, opening presents, eating, drinking, and generally making merry. It’s been a common custom for people to exchange lists of gifts they would like to get from their significant others while children practice their penmanship on those all important letters to Santa. I thought that, in the spirit of the season, I’d like to make out a list of what I want for Christmas this year. Just for fun and variety.

I want to eat Christmas dinner at Papa and Granny Wham’s. I want Papa Wham to say the blessing — his blessing — the same one I can still recite in my head: “Father, pardon us of all our sins; we thank you for these and all other blessing, in Jesus’ name, Amen.” I want to eat Granny Wham’s bone dry turkey and her dressing that she never put onions in because she knew I hated onions. I want Granny Hughes’ English pea dumplings as a side dish. I want one of Aunt Nell’s cakes.

I want us all sitting around a huge table. I want Papa Wham at one end and Papa John at the other. I want Granny Wham to sit down and not walk around with the tea pitcher asking to fill everyone’s glass for the twentieth time. I want Budge next to me and Mama and Rob, Mama Lowe and Jessie, Travis and Dani, and Chloe stretching down from Budge’s side. I want Chloe to have a bottle of cereal held in two good hands. I want Daddy and Teresa, Nick, Keri, and Mason on my other side stretching up the table. I want Daddy to be holding Mason and genuinely happy, smiling and at ease instead of on a ragged emotional edge because of Vietnam rooted PTSD.

I’d say I want Mama and Daddy still together, but even my wildest fantasies have their limits. Also, wishing carelessly can reduce happiness as much as expand it. For instance, had Mama and Daddy not divorced, MAYBE some things in my life would have been better. Maybe not. However, no divorce would then mean no Rob. No Rob; no Baby Huey; no Baby Huey; no Dani and without them both I wouldn’t have my beautiful baby niece, Chloe. It would be the same story on my other side as well. No Teresa would mean no Nicholas; no Nick would mean no Sissy; no Nick and no Sissy would mean no precious baby Mason.

Unfortunately, Mason and Chloe don’t completely erase the pain, anger, and frustration of a busted up family and all the excess arrangements and holiday misery such a lifestyle brings with it — memory is a killing thing in that regard, but they DO give the pain, anger, and frustration new and happier context. They’ve given meaning to the madness. Having those two bright eyed centers of the universe giggling and laughing at the table make the tears worthwhile.

Then I want Aunt Judy and the family she’d have sitting next to Aunt Cathy and Uncle Larry and Blake and Zack and Ashley. I want them all sitting right across from me. I want Granny Wham sitting next to Papa Wham and Aunt Mary and Uncle Carroll sitting — happily — side-by-side next to Granny.  I want Aunt Polly, Aunt Nell, and Aunt Mot — The Three Sisters — sitting together. I want Shane and Ashleigh sitting together nearby. I want little curly-locked Gabriel sitting on his all-grown-up Uncle Scott’s lap.

I want Dad and Sandy nearby — and quiet for a change. I want Missy and Charles and Jackson and Harry somewhere close by. I want Richard, bright-eyed, unhaunted, happy and sober, sitting next to Ki-Ki with Ryken on his lap. I want my beloved Kayla with her mom and stepdad, PJ and O.J,. there with the boys and Celeste, calmly smiling, eating and talking instead of screaming and fighting. This is another case of wishing for wholeness would mean wishing away much happiness. In some convoluted “perfect world” Rich and PJ wouldn’t have divorced and Kayla would have grown up in a stable family, made excellent grades, and gone to a fantastic college on a soccer scholarship. However, if that were true, Budge and I wouldn’t have Ki-Ki and Ryken in our lives, so — as painful as the road my be — I’ll take the demonic with the divine and keep on keeping on.

I want Laura and Rachel and Jen and the rest of Budge and my Florida family sitting with us around the table. I want to sit next to Grandma Sims and ask her if Dad was always as stubborn and hard-headed as he is now!

I want Papa John to read the Christmas story out of Luke from Papa Hurley’s huge family Bible. I want Uncle Claude to pray for us all after the meal. I want Aunt Mildred sitting with him, calm and well. I want Aunt Betty and Uncle Raymond and Rhonda next to Granny Hughes. I want Mama singing Christmas carols (instead of hacking and coughing) with Aunt Lib and Big Granny while Papa John plays his guitar and Aunt Margie plays the piano. I want Jenny there with Bubba and Diane. I want Bluford and Chad, Connie and Gen all sitting together. I want Aunt Margaret passing around her biscuits with one hand while holding Uncle Leroy’s hand with the other.

I want Brooke and Smallwood, Daniel and the Sledzianowski Brothers, Angela and Christian, and of course, my buddy Tina all sitting near me. I want Coach Candler and Mrs. McCuen and all the rest of my Woodmont family sitting around the table and tree with us. I want Maureen and her 3 boys and Dr. O and his three girls with Lance and my District 56 family with them too. I want my “sister” Laura sitting with Cameron and Jacob, smiling and not worried about paying bills or being alone anymore. I want Erica sitting hand in hand with David, happy and satisfied.

I want us all together and happy one more time.

That’s what I want for Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Hug and kiss the ones you love today. Next Christmas might be too late.

Dec20

Well Merry *bleep*ing Christmas to You Too, Jerk!

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For 22 years, starting in 1659, our lovely Puritan forefathers banned Christmas. Now I don’t hold too much with Puritan beliefs. I’ve had enough commerce with modern day Fundamentalists (who are only a pale shadow of the Puritans!) to know most of their beliefs rest in the authority of men rather than Scripture. However, on this whole idea of banning Christmas — well, they may have been on to something. I just spent parts of three days at the mall with about 350,000 of my closest friends and I can testify to one irrefutable fact — a whole truckload of people would be better off mentally, emotionally, and financially if we just skipped Christmas.

Now, before anyone wants to skewer me as being a Jehovah’s Witness or irreverent towards Jesus’ birthday, let me get one thing straight. For those of you who don’t know, Jesus Christ was not born on December 25, 8 BC. The Gospels state that the shepherds were in the fields with their flocks. If you ever have the time, check out the Weather Channel for Bethlehem in December. Not all the Middle East is hot all the time. Suffice it to say neither the shepherds nor their sheep would have been out in the fields in December in Judea.

No, Christmas as we know and love (or loathe) it today is a pastiche of pagan traditions adapted by some early Christians to make their new religion more appealing to their pagan neighbors. They basically co-opted the traditional Feast of Saturnalia from Roman pagans and later on, when Christianity reached the British Isles, the Druids added a healthy dose of their traditional Winter Solstice or Yuletine celebration to the Roman underpinnings. Honestly though, I don’t care about the origins of the Christ Mass. Christ can be honored at Christmas just as much as people want to honor Him. Or not. Paganism has nothing to do with my musings on canceling Christmas.

I’d consider canceling Christmas because it has morphed from “Tis the Season to be Jolly” into “Tis the Season to be a Raging Douchebag!”

Face it, NOTHING brings the collective inner a-holes of society to the surface like the Christmas season. Starting somewhere around August these days we start seeing the first glimmerings of the tinsel to come. Then stores get fully decorated as soon as the black cats and witches hats come down for Halloween. Thanksgiving gets brushed off and then OMG!

It’s Black Friday and the world loses its freaking mind!

From the Friday after Thanksgiving until sometime around the first week of January, you take your life into your hands if you venture to within a mile of a retail establishment. People will SHOOT YOU over a parking spot at the mall. I have personally been given the middle finger by several little old blue haired ladies driving their stretched out Cadillacs around the parking lot of Haywood Mall like the Malachy Brothers and Pinky Tuscadero in a demolition derby.

The Bird — from GRANDMA! That’s what Christmas DOES to people these days.

If you want to visit a breeding ground for strokes and heart attacks, head out to the nearest US Post Office starting around the second week in December. I was in my local station last Thursday to pick up some stamps and this guy a few people back in line from me gets on his cell phone (I will refrain from my “cell phone in public places” rant) and starts pitching a fit with whoever was on the other end. He actually SAID, “I’ll be here for AT LEAST an hour because for some reason EVERY IDIOT in this town brought TEN BOXES to mail!”

Really?

And people accuse ME of going off at the drop of a hat! Dude, word of advice — buy a calendar and some Xanax! Better make it the PURPLE ones too, because you are BEYOND the orange ones.

What I don’t understand is WHY ALL THE FUSS?!

For nearly six solid weeks, the great mass of quietly desperate sheeple run around like AD-HD lemmings on meth buying gifts they can’t afford with money they don’t have to give to people they probably don’t like. Why? Men are forced at bayonet point to put up trees and string lights on those trees and many of those men resort to alcohol in an effort to deal with the madness of trying to make out the color of the one remaining microscopic fleck of paint on the tip of a boxful of artificial tree branches! Is it orange or brown! Makes a difference you know.

We won’t even TALK about the lights. I don’t have the raw numbers, but I’m nearly certain the three leading causes of divorce in America are fights over money, lack of communication, and STRINGING CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ON A TREE!

“YES, DEAR, I see the big gaping hole where we need more lights!!”

People don’t enjoy Christmas anymore. They can’t. The “retail therapy” pushers won’t let them. What should be a nice, calm time for friends and family has turned into a materialistic feeding frenzy! My two oldest nephews get more toys and gadgets and stuff at ONE family get-together than Wilson’s Five and Ten’s whole inventory when I was growing up. The push to keep up with the Joneses who don’t even know you exist has driven people to madness.

People will STEAL PRESENTS out of a car. That is almost, but not quite as low as stealing money out of the offering plate as it comes by (not making change in the offering plate, that’s different). I’ve just recently seen women get into hair-pulling, shirt-ripping cat fights over the last Elmo doll — WHILE THEIR KIDS WERE WATCHING!

It’s unbelievable! Folks get trampled to DEATH every year at Wal-marts and Target stores over a sale on DVDs or some such nonsense. A person’s life has become cheaper to society than a round piece of laser etched plastic.

I can imagine Jesus looking over this chaos that — once upon a time — used to be set aside to celebrate His birth and thinking, “Really, guys?”

So watch out for the bird-flipping grannies out there and if you MUST go out to a mall sometime in the next four days, PLEASE be careful! It’s a tinsel wrapped, tiny light strung jungle out there!

Love y’all! Keep those feet clean!