(With apologies to Quentin Tarrantino…)
“You have to appreciate the delicate nature of This Christmas Situation, “said Jules to Marcellus as he and Vincent stood in Jimmy’s Santa’s Workshop display at Dillards drinking peppermint mochas.
"You smell like beef and cheese."
“When we Christians start messing with Christmas, stuff like this is bound to happen. You wouldn’t believe this mess. We can’t clean this up! And the kids are due back in an hour. We’ve got to fix this, and get out of here as quickly as possible. I need you to tell me you can take care of this.”
“Hey, man, you just chill them elves out, and wait for the Reindeer, who will be there die-rectly,” Marcellus said, cool as a cucumber, sipping a hot cocoa next to Mrs. Wallace as they sat by the pool.
“You’re sending the Reindeer!?! Well, shee-ooot, bro! That’s all you had to say!”
This Christmas situation is indeed delicate. Some Christians refuse to celebrate the holiday at all, and refer to all others who do (loudly, faces scrunched into gargoyle-like images of stone) as “godless liberal heathens”. Some refuse to harbor trees, tinsel, trinkets, or toys on their premises, viewing such things as Evil, and those folks who do succumb to such abominable temptations as deserving of hell.
Many Christians spend the holiday season being really angry at everyone who refers to December as “the holiday season”. (Oops. Dang.) These people spend their holidays protesting, boycotting, and signing petitions. Any corporate entity that hurts their big feeling is summarily labelled “Discriminatory” and “Anti-God”. Wails of “Keep Christ in Christmas!” drown out poor Linus and his friends as they sing Silent Night.
Lots of Christians, if you can believe this, sit around and debate the concept of the gift. Jesus got gifts, so exchanging gifts must be ok, right? Wrong! Is it right or wrong to give gifts? How many? Is it good stewardship to trample fourteen people at 1:30 a.m. in order to get that 42″ flat screen for $299 at Best Buy? Or, should we spend every nickel we can get our hands on? Jesus gave us His all, after all. Some are certain it’s terribly worldly to give anything. Period. You wrap up a Pillow Pet and give it to a child on December 25, you’d better make plans to be on that altar the following Sunday.
Others obsess over whether or not Christ was actually born on December 25. These intellectual giants pull out scientific calculators and flannel graphs, scribbling with a dizzying fury, pulling out spreadsheets which tabulate the nocturnal habits of first century shepherds, the employee handbook for The Order of Abijah, a fifty pound Greek to English dictionary, the Lost Works of Hippolytus, and various other weird trivialities that only matter to three middle-aged bachelors huddled around an iphone in the sound booth of Stick-in-the-Mud Baptist Church.
The pastor of this church, leading the faithful, with great vengeance and furious anger, bellows to the unsuspecting families in his congregation from the pulpit, “Santa Claus does NOT exist! Santa is evil! He is a tool of Satan! If you change the last two letters of his first name, he IS Satan! And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!”
The children sit stunned, their hearts broken, their spirits crushed. Their minds, however, mull this over: if Santa is Satan, and Santa does not exist, then, logically, Satan also does not exist. So how can fake Santa be a tool of a fake Satan? And, if they are both fake, why is the preacher all buzzed up about them? Wait, if Santa and Satan are fake, is Jesus still real?
Tool of Satan?
The children wonder if they should be repenting in sackcloth and ashes for enjoying Beauty and The Beast and Cinderella. They consider suing their parents for mental anguish. How dare these people inflict fiction upon their unsuspecting children! The toddler class gets together after the service and decides they should have a bonfire to burn up all of their satanic stuffed toys. As Pooh Bear and Perry the Platypus are burnt at the stake, the children worry, “Is imagination a sin?”
What have we done?
Christmas, my friends, is about hope. It is about joy, and even (shh!!) fun. Christmas, most of all, is about the love of God, which He beautifully displayed in the gift of the Christ Child. Christmas is innocence and wonder. It is sacred trust, and childlike faith.
Which we adults have summarily destroyed with our Black Fridays and our angry pharisitical rantings.
He solves problems.
The Reindeer arrived in a candy-cane red Acura. His flawless Armani tux (bless gawd) was as impeccable as his hair. He sipped his peppermint mocha, nodding approval to Jimmy (who buys the serious gourmet stuff. His wife buys crap), and said, “Now if I understand the situation correctly, we have one holiday that has been violently destroyed, and if the children come back home, they wouldn’t react none too good. Am I right?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Reindeer.”
“Okay. Jimmy, I’m gonna need to borrow your best Christmas attire. Gather up all the weird sweaters, the toe socks, the funny hats, the fake beards, all that crap, and meet me in the back yard asap. Jules, you and Vincent follow me.”
“A please would be nice.” Vincent said, in his best I’m-the-Sunday-School-Superintendent-and-You-Ain’t voice. The Reindeer faces him, and a hot terror runs through Vincent.
“If I’m curt, gentlemen, it’s because time is a factor. Now, pretty please, with a candy cane on top, go to the freakin’ back yard.”
Dork #1
They stand up against the back fence. Mr. Reindeer has them strip and Jimmy hoses the commercialism, the cynicism, and the ridiculous debating from the two pitiful men. Once dressed in their new finery, Mr. Reindeer and Jimmy stand back and admire their work. “What do you think, Jimmy? How do they look?”
Dork #2
Jimmy eyes them thoughtfully as the children appear in the yard. “Like dorks. They look like a couple of dorks.”
And the children cheered: Christmas was back.