Monday, December 29, 2003
Christmas Time with the Family
This post is in blatant disregard for my own sometime tagline above- "Just because it happened to you, doesn't make it interesting." I am about to tell you things that happened to me over the last week or so and they may or may not be interesting. There'll be some good bits about issues of more universal appeal coming up, so if that's more your speed, go read Instapundit for a while and come back here in a few hours. Otherwise, read on, but don't say I didn't warn you.
Last week we had our Christmas program at church. It was the first one I'd organized, so I was a little nervous about it, but I had lots of very experienced help, so it all went well. Kids reciting verses and singing songs, and the big adult choir and all that. It was fun and uplifting, and a great way to celebrate Christmas. It being church and all, there was no Rudolph, or grandma getting run over by a reindeer or anything of the sort. But there was a lot of beautiful music. The two churches I pastor seem to be blessed with a disproportionate amount of musical talent. We had the big pot luck after that, a holiday classic.
We spent Christmas in Wyoming with Andrea's family. It was nice. The food was great, and there were just entirely too many presents. Katie must have gotten thirty packages. She got the hang of opening them, which was fun, but it's a little sad to see her just tearing through one and setting it aside immediately to move on to the next one, because there were so many.
My nephew Sean was there with his family (Jason and Jenny) too. Sean (14 months old) is about three months younger than Katie and it's interesting to see the differences between them. It is so obvious that he is a boy and she is a girl- he hits things, plays with something for a second and then bangs it on something, and he yells. He doesn't scream, he yells. And he grunts and frowns and throws his food. All boy. Katie on the other hand, plays very delicately and carefully with most things, is much more cautious than Sean with people or with aggressive play (Sean loves to be thrown in the air by his daddy- Katie hates it), speaks in a delicate voice, and throws hissy fits when she's mad, screaming like some superhero with the power to shatter glass with her voice.
The feminists of course would say that they've been conditioned by their surroundings to behave in these manners. And that might be true, if we were animals or robots. If that's true, then nothing we do matters because we're totally slaves to our environment. If babies can be so conditioned by the time they're one year old, then why are the social scientists even bothering to tell us about it? We're all on a course of behavior set for us by an impersonal uncaring world, and nothing could change that. How could you live in a world like that?
No, Sean and Katie were created very differently, and part of that is the fact that one's a boy and one's a girl. It's amazing to see God's creation taking shape in them. It's also sad to see the curse of sin at work in them already, but that's the world we live in. It's a beautiful world, but a deeply flawed one too. But then, that's why we've got Christ.
I guess that turned out to be a little more universal in appeal than I expected.
Last week we had our Christmas program at church. It was the first one I'd organized, so I was a little nervous about it, but I had lots of very experienced help, so it all went well. Kids reciting verses and singing songs, and the big adult choir and all that. It was fun and uplifting, and a great way to celebrate Christmas. It being church and all, there was no Rudolph, or grandma getting run over by a reindeer or anything of the sort. But there was a lot of beautiful music. The two churches I pastor seem to be blessed with a disproportionate amount of musical talent. We had the big pot luck after that, a holiday classic.
We spent Christmas in Wyoming with Andrea's family. It was nice. The food was great, and there were just entirely too many presents. Katie must have gotten thirty packages. She got the hang of opening them, which was fun, but it's a little sad to see her just tearing through one and setting it aside immediately to move on to the next one, because there were so many.
My nephew Sean was there with his family (Jason and Jenny) too. Sean (14 months old) is about three months younger than Katie and it's interesting to see the differences between them. It is so obvious that he is a boy and she is a girl- he hits things, plays with something for a second and then bangs it on something, and he yells. He doesn't scream, he yells. And he grunts and frowns and throws his food. All boy. Katie on the other hand, plays very delicately and carefully with most things, is much more cautious than Sean with people or with aggressive play (Sean loves to be thrown in the air by his daddy- Katie hates it), speaks in a delicate voice, and throws hissy fits when she's mad, screaming like some superhero with the power to shatter glass with her voice.
The feminists of course would say that they've been conditioned by their surroundings to behave in these manners. And that might be true, if we were animals or robots. If that's true, then nothing we do matters because we're totally slaves to our environment. If babies can be so conditioned by the time they're one year old, then why are the social scientists even bothering to tell us about it? We're all on a course of behavior set for us by an impersonal uncaring world, and nothing could change that. How could you live in a world like that?
No, Sean and Katie were created very differently, and part of that is the fact that one's a boy and one's a girl. It's amazing to see God's creation taking shape in them. It's also sad to see the curse of sin at work in them already, but that's the world we live in. It's a beautiful world, but a deeply flawed one too. But then, that's why we've got Christ.
I guess that turned out to be a little more universal in appeal than I expected.
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