The words you will read in a moment are from The Caller Times Newspaper in Corpus Christi. They were written by Garrison Keillor, who we best know from his radio show Prairie Home Companion. Garrison is a Lutheran. He has taken gentle jabs at we Christians through the years. We have needed them. You will discover he has had it with the HAPPY HOLIDAYS approach to Christmas. Let me let him tell you:
"Christmas is a Christian holiday... if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log. Go wassailling and falalaing until you fall down. Eat figgy pudding until you puke., but don't mess with the Messiah.
Christmas does not need any improvements. It is a common ordinary experience that resists brilliant innovation. Just make some gingerbread people and light three candles and sing softly in dim light about the poor man gathering winter fu-el, and the radiant beams, and the holly and the ivy, and you've got it. Too many people work too hard to make Christmas perfect, find the perfect gifts, get a turkey that reaches 100% of potential. Perfection is a goal of brilliant people and it is unnecessary where Christmas is concerned." One other paragraph I liked: " Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to re-write "Silent Night". If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK. Go write your own "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough...and all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls each year. Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write: "Grab your loafers, come along, and if you wanna, we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashana"? No, we didn't."
Was he steamed? You better believe it. He is making his show in Boston now and getting a full dosage of how ultra liberal the East and most religions in the East have become. I salute Garrison Keillor. He is my Christmas hero this year. This Lutheran told it like it is.
This is my Christmas message. Talk with you again after Christmas, the Lord willing.
