Never trust elves. EVER.

"You better watch out, you better not cry,

You better not pout, I'm tellin' you why.

Santa Claus is coming to town."

*record needle scratches*

WHOA-WHOA-WHOA. HOLD UP. Since when is some bearded, old, fat dude in a red costume the guy we gotta be good for??! And he...knows when we're sleeping and when we're awake? And when we've been bad or good? That is just...disturbing. O.e Sometimes I just gotta wonder who came up with this stuff.

When I was 5 or 6, I thought the whole idea was funny. My mom and dad never really told me Santa Claus was real; I kinda got that into my own head because I just think like that and I'd seen a lot of movies. I figured it out one Christmas when my mom forgot to fill the stockings until the morning and I got out of bed and caught her doing it. XD Something like that, anyway. Maybe I "accidentally" peeked into some Wal-Mart bags after my parents went on a shopping spree in December and later found the same things in my stockings. I can't remember. I was only 5. I just remember what house I was in when I figured it out, and a few snatches of memory.

I upgraded a little after that. I just thought it was a gag that parents did to add to the surprise at Christmas. In all honesty, I liked the idea of Mom and Dad putting stuff in the stocking MUCH more than I liked having some stranger do it. I just didn't understand why.

Later on, around 12 or 13, I figured that Santa was a way of teaching kids about God. The presents stood for blessings that God gives us when we're good. And since He's, well, I dunno, GOD, He knows what we've been up to. That's why we have to behave ourselves. Then there's the spirit of Christmas--giving things, not getting things. And God's all about that. Santa, I figured, was a really primitive and childish way of leading up to teaching kids about God.

Getting older, I decided Santa was a symbol. He stood for everyone across the world who delivers presents to kids and such. He was, essentially, Christmas. He worked for God, I figured! Maybe he was even some kind of angel! After all, in all the movies he's such a sweet, jolly, loveable old man--kind of like the grandpa I always wanted but never got.

But the older I got, the more contempt grew in me for Santa. There's nothing wrong with Santa himself; he's just a character. The character's pretty awesome! But here's the thing: God-haters use Santa as a replacement for the real "reason for the season." Jesus and His birth is wiped out of the equation. Santa is the sweet old man who gives us presents, and gives us the so-called spirit of Christmas. We should all try to be like Santa and be giving...to heckfire with Jesus!! Just say "X-Mas" or "Happy Holidays" and you've got no problem.

See, I really HATE people who try to keep God out of the picture. Especially when it comes to holidays. I agree with Sarah, wholeheartedly. So what if it started out pagan. Agreed, that's not right. Agreed, we should celebrate the birth of Jesus every single day of our lives. But that doesn't mean we can't have a special day to celebrate it. Cuz humans are kinda stupid. They forget what Jesus did, because in the run-on sentence of life, they get too busy. But around Christmas, they remember, and they get pumped up with a lot of "giving" power that will last them through the year. ^_^

And here's another thing. I was going to write it up all by myself, but yesterday (Sunday the 18th, actually) I stumbled across this news article... O_O I actually have a little bit of respect for Justin Beiber now...I won't bore you with the entire post, but here's what he said:

"With Christmas just one week away, Justin Bieber isn't planning to head to bed early Dec. 24 to await the arrival of Santa Claus. In fact, the teen pop phenom says he's never believed in the man in the big red suit. "My mom always told me there wasn't a Santa," Bieber says in a new interview with AOL Music. "This was her logic: She thought if I grew up knowing about Santa then finding out he wasn't real, that it would be like she was lying to me. And then when she told me about God, I maybe wouldn't believe her.""

--Stolen from Yahoo News or something like that. XD

So, JB, I still don't like you. I still think you dress like a little Elvis punk and you sounded a whole lot better when you sounded like a kid. I still think that crazed fangirls totally overrate you. I still think you would sound WAY better singing rock than pop. BUT I'm gonna cut you some slack cuz we were brought up the same way. XD Just so you know.

Boy, I am terrible with concluding posts lately. lol I just wanted to say that Relient K's "Santa Claus is Thumbing to Town" (featured below) completely describes how Christmas goes crazy and wild and nuts if you only count Santa and not God. And I shall leave it at that...trusting you ACTUALLY watch the video. Otherwise, you will be lost...And sides, I went to all the trouble to find a funny video for it!!!!

A Silent Night was a Perfect Night

There's something beautifully magical about a silent winter night. I've been out in quite a few--well, at least it was still dark, because thanks to Daylight Savings Time I had to go outside and wait for the bus before the sun even dared peek over the horizon. And since I was so eager to get away from home, I was always the first to the bus stop. Standing there alone on an icy street for about fifteen minutes, I felt so much closer to the rest of the world. It was like I could sense everything. I could hear the wind whispering in the trees, I could see the city lights glowing on the clouds, I could feel the snowflakes caress my cheeks gently as if to apologize for the biting wind that carried them. God felt closer; the angels felt closer; the whole world felt closer. Without the noise, without the chaos, without the crowds, the winter wonderland was perfect. I can't even begin to describe the inspiration that ran through my veins, forming into words as I stood there freezing my tail off. Everyone else would come around, calling me crazy and complaining about the cold. But I endured because of the blissful silence.

Life is so full of noise. Doesn't matter what you're doing, something's always bound to interrupt you. Responsibilities, hobbies, friends, family, enemies, innocent and not-so-innocent bystanders, books, machinery, music, TV, cell phones, Facebook, Blogger, sports, news...and the list goes on. Something's always happening, something always needs to be done, something can always be done. Our heads get crammed so full of useless information that our internal computer starts going slow, processing all the easy things first to get them out of the way. It's the important stuff that gets ignored, that gets left until later and maybe even forgotten until it's too late, and your hard drive crashes.

"Goodness gosh, why don't you just get to the POINT already?!" you guys must be yelling at the computer screen right now. Boy, do I love getting figurative. x3 What I'm trying to say is, the noise and busyness in our lives drown out the gentle whispers of God. We get so darn absorbed in other things that we forget to remember Him. See, God doesn't like having to shout over all the noise. When He does that, things get pretty ugly--like they did with the Great Flood and in Sodom and Gomorrah. And hopefully you've never done anything QUITE that nasty!!! No, God prefers to whisper gently in our ears, in the silence...like during a winter night. Like during that silent winter night 2,000 years ago, when a little baby was born into a stable, among all the animals and smell, to an unassuming poor carpenter and his wife.

The Hebrews looked forward to their Messiah. But they were looking for a knight in shining armor on a white steed, someone who would stomp all the Romans' heads in. They weren't looking for a cute little baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. That's why, unfortunately, they never found Him. People like the Pharisees had all the noise in their heads and they looked in all the wrong places. People like the poor shepherds, who were just sitting outside watching their sheep during that silent night, didn't have all that noise in their heads. When the angels came to tell them, they heard and they knew where to look.

So, like the title says, a silent winter night was a perfect night. It was the perfect time to bring around His little whisper, our Lord and Savior. For those who were listening, the glad tidings were loud and clear. So this year, make sure you keep your ears strained. We can't erase all the noise, but we can close ourselves in our bedrooms and have a quiet little talk with Jesus. Maybe He'll tell you something you need to hear.

Christmas Angels

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for there by some have entertained angels unawares." Hebrews 13:2, KJV

What is an angel? Most of us think of a beautiful creature with long shining hair and soft white wings. Or if you're like Sarah, you picture a fierce warrior wielding a sword. Angels can be both. The Bible tells us about angels, heavenly beings that come from God to do His business. Sometimes they're delivering messages, sometimes they're kicking bad guy tail; but either way, they make a pretty big spectacle. Like that first Christmas two thousand and some-odd years ago, when they lit up the whole sky singing about the Savior's birth. “GloooOoooOooooOooooOriaaa...In Excelsis DeEoooo.”


Can you imagine, the whole field full of bright white heavenly light, and the whole sky full of these beautifully horrifying beings, and the whole ground shaking with the sound of their voice? Those poor shepherds. x]

Given, it's pretty awesome that God has special beings that He uses for messengers or on-call guards, depending on what needs to be done. Maybe someone needs encouragement (like Elijah), or guidance (like Joseph), or even a spiritual slap upside the head (like Balaam). Those angels seemed to come around all the time in the Bible. But the funny thing is, they don't show up as much as they used to—at least, not the real deal. You hear all kinds of stories about fake angels saying they're sent from God when they're really from the devil. A lot of people lose heart because they think God must not care about us very much anymore, just because He doesn't send angels or prophets or messengers anymore. That we know of.

Back in Bible times, people would have believed it when an angel appeared and spoke to them. In these modern times, there's fifty million things that angel could be besides an actual angel sent straight from God. It could be a hologram, or a computer generated image, or a robot, or a hallucination. They'd think the angel was an alien before they believed it was from God. My dad and I talked about that back in April when I was helping him paint a house. I was eating a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich, quietly listening to him rant about how stupid modern-day Christians are. “Why doesn't God send prophets anymore?” he wanted to know. Usually I don't say much when he's talking, because I consider my own opinions to be pretty stupid. But my mind was preoccupied with something else, and I answered before I could catch myself: “Well, nobody would believe them.”

People don't believe in miracles or magic anymore. In a world where science holds all the answers, there's no need to believe in higher powers. There's no need to believe in a higher meaning. Sci-fi has become the new Bible and the new religion. Even the real Christians who believe in angels and such can hardly believe it when an angel or a prophet shows up—because there's been so many fakes cleverly staged by either demons or people who want publicity. So it's pretty feasible to assume that God doesn't send heavenly messengers anymore simply because nobody would listen to them. But that doesn't mean He doesn't send messengers at all. God never loses. He just changes His tactic a little.

Sometimes when I look back at my days in public school, I smile a little and wonder...what do they think of me now? I was a mysterious girl, beautiful, sweet and kind. No matter what anyone did to me, I braced myself and took it with a smile. I was never mean to anyone, at least not in their eyes; I may have lost my temper and cursed every once in a while, but I never did low, underhanded things like they would have in the same situation. No one knew who I was or where I came from. And when I left, I might as well have vanished into thin air. There would have been no way of proving that I'd actually been a real person. For all they know, I could have been an angel. I could have been sent by God to shine a light in that dark place. And who knows, maybe I was.

A friend of mine calls me Angel. Every time I see it in a message, I have to smile a little. Me, an angel? I was a brat in my childhood, I was a sneak in my early teens, and I was just plain evil when I was 16. Nowadays, I can't seem to do anything right. I'm always having dark, morbid thoughts. Some angel I am...at least, in my own opinion. What's the definition of the word angel? A messenger, a guide, a protector. I've been all of the above. With my smile and with my kind acts, I carry the message of salvation. With my encouraging and inspirational words, I point out the light waiting at the end of the tunnel. With a heart that cries out to everyone I see hurt, I do my best to shield my closest friends from harm...and I usually end up saving them in one way or another. God has obviously appointed me to be some kind of backup angel here on earth. That's a big responsibility! Sometimes it makes me pretty upset, because I feel like I'm not good enough. But if I wasn't good enough, God wouldn't have assigned me in the first place.

And have I met angels of my own? Well, sure I have! I won't name names, because I don't want anyone to feel embarrassed. But let me tell you right now, none of those angels exactly fit the stereotype that people have going on in their brains. Most of them are either rebellious punks or brokenhearted individuals. Still, they've been angels to me. They were there when I needed someone. One of them gave me the message to never give up. One of them guides me down this lonely road of life. One of them is my protector, shielding me from hurt. Goodness gawsh, I know angels! O_O Not only that, they're my close personal friends!!!

So many people go around looking for angels. Funny thing is, most of them are in plain sight. They're in the disguise of the tough punk girl who thinks she's ugly and mannish, or the hyperactive fat girl who's always crying, or the bad boy who seems destined for trouble. If you can't see them, be an angel yourself. It doesn't take much--and I tell you this from experience. It's as easy as a smile. Just try it out and see what happens. :)