November 3, 2016 – 51 Days Until My Head Explodes, Or Devotions to Prepare Us For Christ’s Coming

This ornament should have had a better fate. From the neck up, this is a nearly flawless execution of the extremely difficult task of creating Christmas decorations. The lack of hands is just a little troubling, especially since Santa looks to have little feathers for arms. And it seems that the fir trees are just jammed into the end of those furry arms.  “Why?”, seems to be the best question. And, please, I am imploring, why does Santa have tapered, footless animal legs? These are apparently reproductions of ornaments that first appeared in the 1940s. Did Santa have the same body as our good friend “Patrick Star”, the starfish from “SpongeBob Square Pants” before WWII? Santa shouldn’t look like he just got off his horse after riding long and hard across the plains.

The Schreffler Christmas tree is filled with all kinds of ornaments, from those our children have made in daycare and school, to the ones we have purchased at a variety of places. In other words, our tree is a cacophony of ornaments, a veritable potpourri of sights, and in some cases sounds as well. It is a microcosm of the season of Christmas – you will have your senses stimulated in many different ways as you go about your lives this Christmas season. Many of the joys of this season will be the different family activities that await us over the next two months. There will be the cookie baking days, the ornament parties, the gift buying excursions, and the rehearsals for the School and Church “Holiday”/Christmas plays. But we cannot allow the “busy-ness” of the Christmas season to keep us from remembering the true meaning of Christmas. There will be many different opportunities to worship throughout Advent and the week of Christmas. Find a church this Christmas season and spend some time with Jesus. And, if you are making ornaments this Christmas, make plenty of them that tell the true story of Christmas.

Pastor Dave