Tom's Thoughts

Name:
Location: Granite Falls, North Carolina, United States

I'm an ordained United Methodist minister no longer pastoring churches, a former media producer with skills ten years out of date, a writer trying to sell my first novel, and a sales associate keeping body and soul together working for the People's Republic of Corporate America. I'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world, who was my best friend for 17 years before we married.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas!

I know it's time for my annual rant, but first I want to wish everyone I know and everyone else who reads this a merry Christmas and a wonderful grace-filled new year.

Now for the rants:

I want to know what a song sung in a musical that is there to calm children frightened by a summer thunderstorm has to do with Christmas. Yet "My Favorite Things" is heard all through this season mixed in with Santa and Frosty and Rudolph.

Raindrops on roses (summer)
and whiskers on kittens. (no season)
bright copper kettles (no season)
and warm woolen mittens (ah, finally something related to winter.)
brown paper packages tied up with strings (the way stores wrapped purchases before paper and then plastic bags. So MAYBE related to Christmas shopping, but barely.)

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels (again, no season)
Doorbells and sleigh bells (okay, one of the two relates to winter)
and schnitzel with noodles (no season)
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings (spring or fall, but not winter.)

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes (summer)
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes (finally, something related to winter again)
Silver white winters that melt into springs (other end of winter from this, so not Christmas)

When the dog bites (no season)
when the bee stings (summer)

So let's check it out: Three things related to summer. One thing related to spring or fall. Six things not seasonally related. One thing from the end of winter, and only three things directly related to winter and one tangentially related, maybe. So again, what the #%@* does this song have to do with Christmas? Is it things, and merchants want you to think of things while you're shopping? I don't know.

Finally:
Well, I was going to, but I can't find the list I made of things seen and heard around Christmas time that constitute the bulk of certain Christmas songs. Maybe next year.

Meanwhile, have a good one.

Grace and Peace.