Christmas Time Is Here

Christmas time is here

Happiness and cheer

Fun for all that children call

Their favorite time of year

I've been thinking a lot about Christmas right now. It's funny that I've chosen careers in my lifetime where this season is incredibly busy and demanding of my time and attention. Being a mail carrier is really tough this time of year. You have way more packages, and the post office is always trying to find ways to screw us over, so this year just like last year, we aren't allowed to come in early to deliver packages. We have to take everything on our route, so we come back super late in the dark.

My position has changed though since September, and my job has become easier and better. Before, I was a city carrier that did just one route every day. But then a T6 position opened up and I was the winning bidder on it. As a T6, I get paid more and I take five different routes off days. I love the variety of having five different routes. And most of them are pretty easy. I used to have ten to twelve miles of walking a day; now I have maybe a couple of miles. Which means I have to find other ways of not being fat haha.

Of course the first career that I had was ministry, and the last several years was worship ministry, so Christmas was a big deal. Now, when I assess myself as a minister back in the day, I think I was a much better youth minister than worship minister. And honestly, I think I liked youth ministry better, mostly because I didn't have to really interact with the senior minister that much. It seems like most of my problems being on a church staff has been with the relationship with the senior minister. I'm sure some of it is my fault, but I've also worked for some senior ministers who had some serious control issues.

Anyway, as I said I thought I was better as a youth minister. But where I think I excelled in worship ministry was Christmas. I never wanted to just do Christmas songs the way they've always been done; I wanted to find new versions, new songs, and I'm not tooting my own horn here because this comes from people at the churches I worked at, but I really tried to make Christmas special from a worship ministry standpoint.

Not everyone appreciated that though. I remember one Christmas I did some very different things at the Christmas eve service. I did not do anything traditional, I did some very interesting versions of Christmas songs. We got some really good feedback from that year. However, the senior minister I worked for did not like it. I think he may have appreciated it, but the conversation went kind of like this:

Him: why didn't you do a more traditional Christmas eve service? People really like the traditional stuff at that time.

Me: not according to the comments we got from people. One person said that they hadn't been to a Christmas eve service in years but wanted to come back in January because they enjoyed the variations we did on Christmas songs. Another person said that if this is how we did regular church, they would be there every week.

Him: well my parents didn't like it. (his parents went to the church)

Me: your parents are Christians right?

Him: yes...

Me: well the people I'm talking about aren't, or are nominal Christians, so what we did Christmas even might have helped them get closer to god and perhaps we may see them become part of our church.

Him: but my parents didn't like it.

Me: I'm sorry that they didn't, but isn't our Christmas eve service designed to help move those who only come on Christmas and Easter to become members of our church? Your parents are already members and have been Christians for decades. 

Him: I want my parents to be happy about going to the Christmas eve service.

Me: So what you're saying is that really you want me to tailor a Christmas eve service for your parents and their generation who already are in the church, to get away from our mission as a church and to basically say "too bad" to the other people who like the edgy version of Christmas eve.

Him: I guess so.

And that's what I had to do for the next several years at that church. And we never got another positive comment about Christmas eve services in the time I was there. No negative comments, just no positive ones.

The good thing is that I had more leeway on the Sundays of December so I could pour my creative energy into those services.

I know this post is kind of all over the place, but I'm glad that I can appreciate Christmas music again. It took several years after I left ministry and faith in order to do so.

Also - Relient K has the best Christmas album of this millenium.

And - I just discovered another new favorite Christmas song. It's called "Christmas Lights" by the band Yellowcard. Check it out! It's so good.

One of my goals for next year is to get back into playing guitar, grabbing a few friends, and playing some Christmas songs somewhere in December.

Merry  Christmas, everyone.