Ok folks, here's another time when you get to hear Kim (that's me) say: "COME ON!!! GET A LIFE!"
Once a month we have a Church Family Play Date, an intergenerational fellowship event. I've tried to keep it pretty low key so that our department has at least one event that doesn't involve months of planning. So far we've gone bowling and have carved pumpkins together (some controversy there). The event for November is a movie--seems simple enough, but it has been the toughest thing we've planned yet.
Play Date is usually on the first Friday of the month, but that was my bday weekend, and others were out of town, so we changed it to the following Friday; however, I made the decision to change it to that Friday on the cell phone AT MY BIRTHDAY DINNER with no calendar in front of me and thus forgot that it was on the same day as a smaller event at the church. This prompted hurt feelings that needed to be smoothed over.
So we had to change it again to this weekend, which means that the original movie that we wanted to see is not playing anymore. Now, I figure that there are a lot of great movies out now (and keep in mind that this is intergenerational), but parents were complaining about my pick of PG movies, so we picked the only G movie around: Santa Clause 3.
Now I didn't like SC 1 and certainly didn't see 2, mainly because that sort of Tim the Toolman humor just doesn't appeal to me, but it's a harmless movie, it's holiday related, and it's rated G is my thinking. OH THE BACKLASH! It's Santa! Santa is evil. They start going after Santa like illiterate villagers after Frankenstein's monster. So I say, Ok, there are the PG movies I offered: Flicka, Flushed Away, Open Season, blah blah blah... The response: "Oh no, I can't have my child watch a PG movie! That's worse than Santa."
K, now here's my take on this. Um...PG means what? Parental Guidance, which means...gasp...you are supposed to watch the movie with your child and hopefully have a dialogue with them about anything you find objectionable. Point 2, again why is Santa evil, and why are we teaching kids that Santa is evil??? Good lord, if they tell their friends (who love Santa) that Santa's evil, can you imagine what that would be like?
You know what I hate about Santa? Nothing, but I hate the devisiveness his image brings about--from Christians! More and more I feel that Christians are turning into this frightening caricature from a Bradbury novel, damning imagination and promoting the Thought Police. It's really starting to freak me out. What was supposed to be a calm, fun activity, has turned into a nightmare.
Ok, ok, I'm done. Tonight is KidsInC, which is my favorite part of the week (I count the days until Wednesday), so I'll have a wonderful report to post about after tonight.
But for now...HUMBUG!
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C.S. Lewis is well-documented as saying, to the effect, that he'd much rather show a pagan the Truth of God than an atheist.
Whereas an atheist had closed off God, the pagan would be seeking some supernatural truth - but simply not have found it yet.
Lewis said paganism is simply a precursor to true faith in Christ – according to what Walter Hooper wrote of Lewis’ concept, “he viewed paganism not as an evil child of Satan but rather as a ragged and wild but essentially good uncle of Christianity." He thought it was a necessary link in the “myth turned reality” of Christianity.
I wouldn't imagine this is new to you, but I keep coming back to it personally myself, when Christians get their knickers into a knot about Santa Claus, or Harry Potter, or any number of "evil" things.
Maybe you'd like to send your parents off in this direction, to read more about what C.S. Lewis wrote. Come to think of it, Lewis wrote Santa Claus into Narnia too, now didn't he?
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