by | Dec 19, 2023 | Uncategorized
Charles Schulz’s improbable holiday special echoed his own acquaintance with lowliness.
Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” It’s an oft-repeated, tongue-in-cheek axiom quipped by comedic figures like Steve Allen, Lenny Bruce, and Alan Alda (in Woody Allen’s film Crimes and Misdemeanors).
The inherent cynicism in this remark is both jarring and comical. But in the art of Charles M. Schulz, the cartoonist and creator of the Peanuts comic strip, there is some truth to it. In one portion of his fascinating new book, Charlie Brown’s Christmas Miracle: The Inspiring, Untold Story of the Making of a Holiday Classic, author Michael Keane narrates the sad story of Schulz’s failed relationship with Donna Johnson Wold, a young woman with “violent red hair.”
Donna was Charles’s first love, but she was torn in her devotions between Schulz and another man. In the end, as Keane explains, Donna left Charles and chose the other man, adding to a long string of childhood humiliations that he collected “the way other people might collect stamps or seashells.”
But this rejection bred creativity. As Keane observes, “The day his affections were spurned by the woman he loved was the day that forged the character of Charlie Brown.” The relatable, sad-sack little boy would always suffer unrequited love for a little red-haired girl, and this suffering fueled the kind of comedy that leads most viewers to laugh endearingly, perhaps even sharing what Keane calls a “wince of recognition.”
Humor in sadness
The most effective moments of Keane’s book come from the pervasive underdog stories of those closest to the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas, including producer Lee Mendelson, director Bill Melendez, musician Vince Guaraldi, and Schulz himself, the heart …
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by | Dec 19, 2023 | Uncategorized
I picture a clean, sweet Nativity scene. But Jesus chose to come to a dirty, broken world.
When I think about the night of Jesus’ birth, the first picture that comes to mind is straight from my childhood. It’s like I’m peering into a snow globe manger scene. Hallmark Channel perfect, it’s clean and serene. Everyone is in the correct place. Snow falls softly, blanketing the hillside in a carpet of quiet. All is calm. All is bright. Give it a good shake, and nothing falls out of place. The snow gently swirls, then settles over the pristine couple and silent baby once again.
But that image is quickly crowded by another. Nearly 15 years ago, my husband and I lived in a dusty Chinese village on the outskirts of Beijing. We volunteered for four years at New Day Foster Home, a private, Christian nonprofit organization that—in those days, before the Chinese government limited the work of NGOs across the country—helped fund surgeries and provided long-term foster care for medically fragile orphans. We lived in an apartment complex about a mile from the organization’s campus, and most mornings we walked behind a flock of sheep and their shepherd on our way to work.
I recently reread what I wrote in my journal at the time, a description of that shepherd’s stable. You could smell it before you saw it. Fetid and filthy, the sheep crowded in at the end of a day of foraging for food. In the summer, flies buzzed. In the winter, sludge froze solid. I didn’t want to go near; it was too dirty.
I would pass the sheep and their shepherd, pitying him a little, silently thankful that my own job didn’t require me to mess around in muck. Around Christmas, I pictured my Savior born amid fresh, sweet hay in an inexplicably warm and comforting stable. The …
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by | Dec 18, 2023 | Uncategorized
Through Nativity art, the Word takes on flesh across diverse Eastern cultures.
Jesus was born in Asia. He was Asian. Yet the preponderance of Christian art that shows him at home in Europe has meant that he is embedded deeply in the popular imagination as Western.
The artists in this photo essay bring him back to Asia—but not to ancient Israel. They make the birth a local event, translating the story into their own cultural contexts. And so we see Jesus wearing, for example, the bone necklace of an Igorot chief (the Indigenous people of northern Luzon, Philippines) or greeted by water buffalo at a roadside pavilion in Thailand.
Some may object to depicting Jesus as anything other than a brown male born into a Jewish family in Bethlehem of Judea in the first century, believing that doing so undermines his historicity. But Christian artists who tackle the subject of the Incarnation are often aiming not at historical realism but at theological meaning.
By representing Jesus as Japanese, Indonesian, or Indian, they convey a sense of God’s immanence, his “with-us–ness,” for their own communities—and for everyone else, the universality of Christ’s birth.
However, it should be noted that not all Asians prefer Asian-specific representations of Christ. In fact, Christians in Asia tend to prefer the traditional European-style art with which many were introduced to the faith; they consider it the most authentically Christian. Part of this preference has to do with how closely tied certain Asian art styles and forms are to other religions, which most Christian converts want to distance themselves from.
That means that the Asian Christian artist who feels called to depict biblical themes, and to do so in an indigenized way, often does not find widespread support in their own …
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by | Dec 17, 2023 | Uncategorized
How to listen for God’s leading when things seem to go wrong
Joseph is known as the silent saint. Though his part in the story of Christ is not small—his is the royal line Jesus claims, his the profession Jesus adopts—he does not say a single word in any of the Gospels. This is something of a theme in the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth: Zechariah struck silent in the temple and Joseph quietly considering how to proceed, while Mary and Elizabeth burst forth in prophetic utterance, early proclamations of the gospel.
But just because Joseph does not speak should not lead us to think that he is passive. Indeed, Joseph is presented to us as a man of decisive action emerging from a rich inner life. We are told that upon learning his wife-to-be is pregnant, he does not immediately break their engagement, subjecting her to public embarrassment and possibly much worse. Despite what any wounded fiancé in the fresh pain of apparent unfaithfulness might be tempted to do, Joseph instead forms a merciful and wise plan.
The only character description we are given of Joseph is that he is “faithful to the law” (v. 19). So, without publicizing Mary’s situation to anyone (as far as we are told), he decides on a plan that is both faithful to the law and gracious to Mary. All this he comes to privately, and we can only assume painfully, and all his pain and his generosity remain beneath the surface. The silent saint has a virtue that simmers beneath the surface, where his self-control in the face of being wronged restrains him and allows him not only to forbear but also protect Mary, the source of his pain.
And as with many people who have made fraught decisions within themselves, something bubbles up for Joseph from even deeper beneath the surface: a dream, and …
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by | Dec 17, 2023 | Uncategorized
How to listen for God’s leading when things seem to go wrong
Joseph is known as the silent saint. Though his part in the story of Christ is not small—his is the royal line Jesus claims, his the profession Jesus adopts—he does not say a single word in any of the Gospels. This is something of a theme in the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth: Zechariah struck silent in the temple and Joseph quietly considering how to proceed, while Mary and Elizabeth burst forth in prophetic utterance, early proclamations of the gospel.
But just because Joseph does not speak should not lead us to think that he is passive. Indeed, Joseph is presented to us as a man of decisive action emerging from a rich inner life. We are told that upon learning his wife-to-be is pregnant, he does not immediately break their engagement, subjecting her to public embarrassment and possibly much worse. Despite what any wounded fiancé in the fresh pain of apparent unfaithfulness might be tempted to do, Joseph instead forms a merciful and wise plan.
The only character description we are given of Joseph is that he is “faithful to the law” (v. 19). So, without publicizing Mary’s situation to anyone (as far as we are told), he decides on a plan that is both faithful to the law and gracious to Mary. All this he comes to privately, and we can only assume painfully, and all his pain and his generosity remain beneath the surface. The silent saint has a virtue that simmers beneath the surface, where his self-control in the face of being wronged restrains him and allows him not only to forbear but also protect Mary, the source of his pain.
And as with many people who have made fraught decisions within themselves, something bubbles up for Joseph from even deeper beneath the surface: a dream, and …
Continue reading…
