Christmas Day 2006

Had dinner tonight at the Grand Village Chinese Restaurant on NW 23.

I've had far more Christmas dinners alone in my life than with other people, and being with big crowds of people at Christmas sort of overwhelms me.

But at the same time, this is the time of year where I find myself wondering why I could never have and enjoy a normal life. By 'normal' I mean, of course, that probably mythical life of married-to-a-loving-wife-two-kids-SUV-in-the-driveway bliss.

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Earlier today, I cleaned out my fridge. Well, I started the task, anyway. I need to get an ice chest for temporary storage then really get in and clean the thing. In any event, I dropped an almost-full quart of chicken pho that had been there since, oh, October. It sprayed clear across the kitchen, giving me even more to clean up. Fortunately, the noodles were more like rice vermicelli, so they stayed in a couple of big pungent clumps.

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Roger Lienke sings a fairly subversive version of the 'The First Noel' which includes lyrics he wrote himself about Jesus coming for the meek and the insecure.

When I was a born-again Christian in the early seventies (which I still am, I guess, if you subscribe to the once saved, always saved theory), I learned from sermons that God loves everyone.

But what I saw in practice was that God loved beautiful people more than ordinary-looking people, and rich people more than poor people.

And he loved OU and Dallas Cowboys football players more than anyone -- even more than football players from OSU or Houston or Kansas City. They used to bring OU players to our church to give us their testimony. I wondered why I should be more impressed with a football player than, say, a scientist or a historian.

Christianity as practiced there was simply Jesus slapped on a box of prefab biases, prejudices and preferences, like Colonel Sanders on a bucket of chicken. Every so often some preacher or evangelist would start off a sermon by warning us he wasn't there to preach a 'soft, easy' gospel, but rather a 'strong, challenging, Bible-based' gospel. This inevitably meant the same assortment of biases, prejudices and preferences, but with the Republican Party platform tacked on as well.

I don't miss any of it. Fundamentalists should be ashamed of the stuff they promulgate, but 'shame' is not found in their dictionary.

So, happy birthday, baby Jesus. I hope you come back soon and kick these people's asses.