It took twelve hours, but someone has finally been able to tie to corrupt Bush Nazi administration (did I leave an epithet out?) to the mine tragedy in West Virginia.

The president of the United Mine Workers said on CNN that the administration was keeping the MSHA from doing its job. He also said that the tragedy wouldn't have happened in a union mine, because union mines are safer.

I've been waiting for this. I told my wife this morning that it would end up being Bush's fault that the mine collapsed.

We have to find someone to blame. Accident's don't just happen -- they happen becasue the government -- excuse me, I mean the Government -- doesn't take care of us. The Government is our shepherd, we should never want.

Bad things happen, folks. It's a part of the fallen world we live in. Blaming people after the fact won't bring back the dead. Let's find out what went wrong, and try to make sure it doesn't happen again. And please don't start turning this into a political issue. Don't insult the memory of those who died by using their deaths as an opportunity to make political points.

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Why celebrate Christmas now? What made the early church start celebrating in December? We've been taught that it was to compete with pagan holidays -- in fact, one of my favorite cartoons recently mentioned it. But is it right?

Maybe not. Head over to Between Two Worlds and check this out. And think about what you've always been taught about Christmas, and how it may all be wrong.

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Still think that the "Religious Right" is running things in the US? Still think that evangelical Christians have all kinds of political muscle? Well try this on for size:

We can't even influence the White House Christmas card. Excuse me -- holiday card.

While everyone is up in arms about the "War on Christmas"(tm), the White House (where George W. "What a Fine Born-Again President" Bush lives) sends out a Christmas card that wishes everyone a happy holiday season.

I personally have no problem with this. It is, after all, a season of many holidays. There are a LOT of holidays crammed into the space on the calendar between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, so calling it the holiday season is completely correct and accurate in my own humble opinion.

But haven't we been complaining about this? (And by 'we' I mean evangelical Christians in general, specifically those whom the rest of the world consider our "spokesmen") Yet "our President" isn't on message. We can't even get him to change. How much political power do we really have? Or are we all finally ready to admit that the GOP treats us like the crazy rich aunt that nobody admits they're related to until she's got presents to hand out.

We have a lot more to be concerned about this year. There are better places to spend our resources. I don't like the idea that companies are putting policies in place that don't allow employees to say "Merry Christmas" to people, but I can't change people's stupid misunderstandings of the word tolerance. What I can do is share the truth of Christmas with as many people as I can, in the knowledge that this truth can transform lives.

And I can wish everyone I see a Merry Christmas.

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Most of what we actually know about St. Nicholas of Myra is legendary. He was wealthy, having inherited a fortune as a young man when his parents died. He gave gifts from his wealth to the needy, but preferred to do it secretly -- giving rise to part of the Santa Claus legend. Some even say that he threw gold coins down the chimney, where it would lodge in the stockings that were hung up to dry overnight.

Nicholas later became the bishop of Myra -- rather against his will, according to the accounts we have. He was a champion of orthodoxy, and was especially incenseced at the Arian heresy that was running rampant. Legend has it that he actually punched Arius in the face during the council of Nicea, and would have been removed from his bishopric had a vision of CHrist not told the other assembled bishops that Nicholas had done well.

We do not know when Nicholas was born, so his Feast Day is the day of his death, somewhere between 341 and 352. Nicholas is venerated by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, but it is the Russian Orthodox Church that holds him in the highest regard. He is the patron saint of seafarers, scholars, bankers, pawnbrokers, jurists, brewers, coopers, travelers, perfumers, unmarried girls, brides, robbers and children.

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I'm on a roll with Christmas posts today. This one also touches a bit on the whole politically-correct view of tolerance.

Story 1: A chaplain at Georgetown University in Washington DC threatened to resign if the school went through with plans to remove crucifixes from it's classrooms -- a move toward a policy of tolerance at the once Catholic school. No surprise there.

The chaplain is Muslim.

Story 2: From the Cincinnatti Enquirer interview with Karen Dabdoub, president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations:

Who are we fooling? The Jews donÂ’t put up a tree for Hanukah; the Muslims donÂ’t put up a tree for Ramadan. It doesnÂ’t take away from my celebration of my holiday for other people to celebrate their holiday. I donÂ’t want anybodyÂ’s holidays to be watered-down. I think theyÂ’re all wonderful.

Now that's tolerance. I don't have any serious awards that I give out, or Ms Dabdoub would get one. BIG thanks to GetReligion for this one.

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OK, when I first heard it, I thought it was a joke. I figured someone had pulled a Larknews and written a fake story, and then some folks with an axe to grind picked it up and ran with it. It's happened before.

But no -- it's true. The "mega-churches" have cancelled their Christmas day services.

I was going to parody this decision, but I can't. And I'm not going to pull any punches on this. more...

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I'm torn on this issue, I admit. On the one hand, the pig-ignorance of people who insist on calling them "holiday trees" when Christmas is the only holiday currently being celebrated that features a tree as a symbol bothers me beyond belief. I think that it's stupid to ignore the fact that the nativity is an important symbol of the season. And I plan on sending the ACLU a nice "Wise men still seek Him" Christmas card this year.

But, on the other hand, I've been an advocate of less commercialization at Christmas for a while now, and it seems that when we boycot and protest and complain that stores aren't saying "Merry Christmas" we are actually encouraging the increased commercialization of this holiday. We're telling them that our idea of Christmas includes sales and shopping, charge cards at the ready.

I really don't care what the rest of the world calls this time of year. Last year about this time, I asked the non-Christian world to get their hands off our holiday, and it was pointed out to me that Christians are at the front of the charge, making the "holiday season" more a celebration of conspicuous consumption and debt than a celebration of the birth of our Saviour. What is our main purpose this time of year?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm still planning on exchanging gifts with my family this year. My daughter loves the idea that Santa is going to come -- though she's worried about how he's getting into the house, since we have no chimney. It's a fun time of year.

But we act as if it's our main focus. We get mad if the stores where we're spending our money don't recognize our holiday. We make sure that everyone knows it's Christmas, not "the holiday season."

And our Jewish friends sit back, with their ages-old tradition of Hannukah, safe from the commercial exploitation that we've brought on ourselves, and smile. Or maybe they laugh.

{edit -- a VERY well-written commentary on this can be found here}

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Not long ago, I reviewed Tim Bete's book In the Beginning, There Were No Diapers. Tim is a great person, and a very funny guy, and I get the occasional email from him letting me know about his book or something else he's written. He sent me permission to use this poem at the beginning of November, and I've saved it until now -- the beginning of the Christmas season.
more...

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OK, I said I wasn't going out. I did.

I wasn't happy about going out, but I went because we took my daughter to see Santa Claus today. We got a 5x7, a CD, AND the copyright to the picture for a decent price. And I learned something interesting.

Black Friday at about 3PM is a perfect time to visit Santa. No line, no crowd. Santa talked to my daughter for quite a while (no line!) and posed for several pictures.

I didn't buy anything. My wife attempted to get one of the cheap laptops that WalMart was selling, but she was too late. She heard from employees that security had to be called because of people cutting in line. Some people actually called 911 to report line-cutters.

Tim Challies has an excellent post touching on this American phenomenon called Black Friday. You need to read the whole thing, but pay special attention to this part:

While I am somewhat envious of American Thanksgiving I am in no way envious of Black Friday. In fact, one could make the argument that the entire long weekend is a celebration not of thanksgiving, but of excess and gluttony. On Thursday people eat far too much and follow that on Friday by spending far too much. Excess: it's the American way! Wouldn't it make for a nicer weekend if, instead of shopping, people went out and shared what they had rather than spend it?

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September 12, 1931 - November 15, 2005

It is with great sorrow that Bellevue Baptist Church announces the passing of her beloved Pastor Emeritus, Dr. Adrian Rogers. For 32 years, Dr. Rogers taught the Bellevue congregation the Word of God, displayed the character of Jesus, and showed us how to trust, love, and follow the Holy Spirit. With his guidance, Bellevue experienced tremendous growth in numbers and maturity. One can encapsulate Dr. Rogers' service to us in one brief statement: he taught us how to love Jesus. For that we are eternally grateful. His accomplishments are many; his reward in heaven eternal. We will continue to remember Joyce and the family in our prayers and Dr. Rogers in our hearts.

We thank the Lord for sending us a dedicated servant. He fought the good fight and finished the course. We echo the words of our Heavenly Father, "well done, good and faithful servant."

Dr. Rogers' body will lie in state Wednesday from 5:00-8:00 p.m. and Thursday from 1:00-6:00 p.m. in Bellevue's sanctuary. Visitation with the family is 4:00-6:00 p.m. Thursday in the sanctuary. The funeral service will begin at 6:00 p.m.

The family kindly requests that any memorials be sent to the "Adrian Rogers Pastor Training Institute" to go toward the continuance of his ministry and vision to train pastors for the furtherance of the Gospel here and around the world.

Gifts may be sent to:

Adrian Roger Pastor Training Institute
c/o Love Worth Finding
2941 Kate Bond Road
Memphis, TN 38133

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Everyone knows I'm not a defender of Pat "Foot in Mouth Tastes Great" Robertson. But this time, I have to say something about the coverage of what he said -- and didn't say.

Associated Press

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city," Mr. Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club .

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"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the Internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."

And, to be fair, it's not a big news story. There are other things that we have to talk about. But this actually helps me support one of my favorite soapbox issues. more...

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I've left this story alone, for a lot of reasons -- mainly because I don't like blogging politics, partially because I've not been impressed with the nominee. But now that the nomination is gone, I want to talk a little bit about why I'm glad.

I know nothing about Harriet Miers. She may be hugely qualified. SHe may have gone on to be the best justice we've had in a long time. But the only thing we really know about her is that she used to be Roman Catholic, and converted to evangelical, Protestant Christianity.

In the Roberts nomination, religion was off the table. Anyone who mentioned his faith was chastened, because it should only matter how good a justice he would be. And I agree with that -- there should be no litmus test of faith. We all wanted Roberts to be judged on his ability.

But not Miers. It's almost like Bush was saying to us, "Don't worry about what she thinks -- she's one of us! {wink, wink, nudge, nudge}" Christians were expected to support her because she's a Christian.

I don't like that attitude. I don't like being pandered to by the GOP, as if I'm some immature kid who has to have a candy bar thrown to him every so often so he doesn't act up. There are plenty of highly qualified, conservative judges out there who would be a slam-dunk nominee.

I almost thing that the President set Miers up for failure. It's as if he decided to give everyone the nominee that everyone feared the most, and then at the last minute pull her back and give us something else. And that's not fair to Harriet Miers, it's not fair to conservative Christians, and it's not fair to the counrty.

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Do it yourself .... sodas.

Soda Club is introducing their line of countertop brewing appliances to the United States. The press release, web site, and everything I've read about them says that they're pretty popular in Europe, and are expecting great things from their entry into the US market. more...

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So McDonalds is going to start putting nutritional information right on the packaging of its food, huh? And this is some kind of a victory for the fast-food-eating public, huh?

more...

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OK, this will sound really funny to anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time at all, given my occasional lack of posting, but I'm going for it this year. I've registered for National Novel Writing Month.

My goal is to prove to myself that I can actually sustain writing the same story for one month. At this point, the 50,000 words is a bonus. I've had ideas running through my head in the past, but never did much of anything with them. Now is the time.

My wife has also decided to do it, though she hasn't registered yet. Of course, she's had a short story published already, and has two novel ideas, so she's got a head start on me.

I just wish it wasn't strictly a novel writing thing -- I've got an awesome nonfiction idea that I've been playing with for the past few weeks, and I'd like to get that going. But I guess I can do the proposal this month, and do some serious work on it in December and January.

Anybody else doing this? Maybe we should form a "support group" to keep each other going!

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This one via Al Mohler. Today's Washington Post:

The federal government will help rebuild parochial schools, nursing homes and similar religious institutions but will not pay for reconstruction of churches or other houses of worship destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, administration officials said yesterday.

Well, here's one Southern Baptist who sincerely hopes that every one of our buildings is used for "inherently religious activities." This looks like a genuinely bad idea. Government money means government entanglement. Who will decide what constitutes "inherently religious activities?"

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OK, another hat tip to Tim Challies for this one.

I think that one paragraph says it all about this:

Capitalizing on the ultra-trendy Jesus clothing movement, we proudly introduce Jesus Loves T-Shirts: an edgy collection of T-shirts featuring all the people we are afraid to love.
{emphasis mine}

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Tim Challies had a great post on this yesterday, and I was planning on writing this yesterday evening, but you know what they say about "best laid plans." Tim talks about John MacArthur's response to Halloween, and talks about his own efforts. He points out that, to many neighborhood kids, a dark house at Halloween isn't taking a stand against Satanism or paganism -- it's a house full of people who can't (or won't) have any fun.
more...

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