Tag: Christmas

Merry Christmas

I’ve pretty much, as much as possible anyway, avoided writing anything too Christmassy this year. Because the Christian blogosphere tends to descend into a sea of red and white triteness at this time of year – or it starts banging on about some war on Christmas. I’m not hugely interested in writing either of those posts. So, let me say this: Merry Christmas.

And then let me point out that Christmas is about Jesus and church. That’s where the “mass” comes from. Right? But you don’t see anybody suggesting a “War on Church” – I guess because xmas still has the mass bit…

Anyway. Eat lots. Be good to your mother/wife/significant other. And if you are a mother/wife/significant other make sure you’re not doing all the work.

That is all.

Kids say the darndest things about Christmas

This cute little nativity story pretty comprehensively sums up the modern confusion about Christmas. I walked into EB (a computer games store) yesterday and noticed their current catalogue reads “What Would Santa Do”…

A Facebook Christmas

This is nice. The Christmas Story, social media style:

Via Communicate Jesus.

Save Christmas: Kill an elf

Findo found this story about a minister so keen to defend the honour of Christmas that he’s executing a satanic elf to make the point.

Elves, of course, are servants of Satan. Just like Hitler.


This weekend, Knudsen’s hatred for the creature he says “comes from the devil” manifested itself in the form of a mock execution by hanging of a Christmas elf outside his church.

Around the elf’s neck was a sign reading “we reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises”, a reference to the Christian baptism rite.

Knudsen said decorating with elves at Christmas was “comparable to decorating with Nazi flags”, and described elves of all sorts as “poltergeists that come from the devil and make children sick”.

Give the gift of coffee this Christmas

People regularly ask me what coffee stuff they should buy for their loved ones. I like coffee. And I know a fair bit about coffee. But I hate getting coffee presents from people – because usually they’re rubbish (unless you’re very cool people who come to visit from Sydney and bring Campos beans. You know who you are).

So here is a bit of a coffee connoisseur’s guide to Christmas shopping, for a variety of budgets.

Beans

Buy some from me. At the moment I’ve got a sensational Brazilian single origin “Toffee” bean, that’s what it’s called. It’s not sugar coated. Best coffee yet. I think I’m actually going to have to raise my prices in the new year (by about $5), so get them while you can at $20 a kilo.

Buy some from Campos. Their Superior Blend is a knockout, and $40 a kilo.

Buy some from BlackStar. Their Revolutionary Espresso Blend is pretty good, and $35 a kilo.

Buy some from Cup. Cup offers a few single origins and a “seasonal blend.” They sell it in one third kilo bags. $45 per kilo.

Or sign them up for a “Coffee Sub Club” coffee bean subscription with Ministry Grounds. Fantastic range of single origins and a special “Special Reserve” offer.

Cups
Never underestimate the importance of good cups. When my folks were in Italy earlier this year the only souvenir I asked for was a set of good Italian porcelain cups, just garden variety ones, of the right size. For cappuccinos you want a demitasse cup. Half a cup. And smaller for espressos, macchiatos and piccolos.

If you want to get really fancy you can get Bodum’s double walled insulated espresso cups. They’re $20 each. And it sucks when a careless house guest or curtain and blind cleaner knocks one onto the floor and shatters it.

Campos sells sets of six branded cups for $45.

Hand Grinder

Neil from Ministry Grounds sells these Kyocera Hand Grinders for $88 including shipping and coffee (you can also get a combo with the Aeropress).

Zassenhaus are a German company famous for their handheld coffee grinders. They’re incredibly hard to come by – and vintage ones sell for over $150. There’s one for sale here they’re sold out (amongst a range of other grinding options).

Aeropress
The Aeropress is a powerless coffee maker perfect for camping, some people say the coffee is just as good as from a real machine. But I haven’t tried it, so I can’t comment. I

You can buy one online for $54 from Ministry Grounds They look cheap and plastic because they are. But they’re a coffee geek thing.

Syphon

Syphons look cool, use a gas burner, and make exquisite coffee capturing the subtleties of different beans.

The cheapest I can find them is at Campos online (though I suspect postage adds a bit), they sell them for $125 with burner. The Coffee Guy at Wooloowin has them instore for $165, though they’re different brands so we’re comparing Golden Delicious with Granny Smith here. This is what I’m hoping for as a combined birthday/Christmas present from my wife this year. Hint. Hint.

Ministry Grounds sells the Hario 2 Cup for $140.

MyPressi Twist
The MyPressi is a soda-bulb powered hand held espresso maker. It’s pretty cool. Though at $299 is pretty expensive. You can buy direct from the company for $149 currently (not including postage).

You can grab one online from Toby’s Estate – if you’re in Brisbane the Coffee Guy has them on the shelf.

Grinder sub $200

Sunbeam’s EM0480 Conical Burr grinder is a winner, it’s what I had before I upgraded to a stupidly expensive cafe grinder (a Macap M4 which I am very happy with).

Espresso Machine sub $200

Anything under $100 isn’t going to last long and is likely to make terrible coffee. Ignore anything you read about pump pressure, and if it creates crema by putting a double floor onto the basket in the handle it’s designed to be used with bad supermarket beans that need an external aid to create an imagined sense of body.

I was pretty happy with our Sunbeam Cafe Series machine (the cheapest I’d go, I think), if you’re looking to spend just over the $200 mark the Breville Ikon is a pretty good machine. But the grinder is way more important. The Kyocera/Aeropress combo from Ministry Grounds is the best bet for cheap coffee. Unless you want to get a plunger or one of these pourover filters ($35 from Ministry Grounds) and some filter papers.

Bonus presents for the real snob

Roaster sub $40

A popcorn maker is all you need to get started roasting at home.

Roaster sub $60
Snaffle a second hand breadmaker from a garage sale and get one of Bunning’s Heat Guns (in the paint section) which comes with a lifetime guarantee for something like $25, and you’re on your way to roasting big batches of beans at home.

Roaster sub $500
The Behmor Coffee Roaster I use is great for 500gm batches of coffee, Ministry Grounds no longer sell them, but a quick google will show you that others still do.

Books and DVDs
Coffee Parts have a great range of more expensive coffee machines and grinders – and if they sell it it’s probably pretty good (plus parts are available for it). But they also sell a huge range of other coffee related stuff for amateur baristas and coffee enthusiasts. Including books and DVDs.

5 things about being a Christmas baby

Unlike Jesus, I was actually born on the 25th of December. People often ask me what it’s like having a birthday on Christmas Day. I don’t really know any different – but this XKCD comic prompted a post of reflections of sharing my birthday celebrations with the king of the world.

  1. When I was still really excited by birthdays I felt pretty ripped off about not having a normal birthday. We used to celebrate my birthday a month early (but never celebrated Christmas early). As I grew older the date I celebrated my birthday moved closer and closer to the actual date. In the last couple of years I’ve managed to snag the morning or the afternoon of the 25th.
  2. The combo present never has the same ticket value as two individual presents for each occasion.
  3. Asking someone who celebrates a birthday on Christmas Day if they like their birthday is like asking them if the like their name – except that you can’t change your birthday by deed poll. Like I mentioned up there – I know no different.
  4. Christmas babies are spared the awkwardness of unreciprocated well wishing – when someone says “happy birthday” to me I can always respond “Merry Christmas”.
  5. By the age of five I had heard all the good jokes about sharing a birthday with Jesus. Unless you’ve got something truly original to contribute to the discussion when talking to a Christmas baby over the age of five it’s probably not worth it. Any laughs will be to spare your feelings.

Scratching the Christmas itch

Churches all over the world were jam packed over the last couple of days as people celebrated Christmas. Churches in Australia were no doubt packed like sardines in a tin – full to the gills with “believers” who only come to church at Christmas and Easter.

According to the two batches of stats I’ve posted recently about 50% of people in Australia identify as “Christian” and about 20% go to church semi-regularly.

The other 30% are those, who in the stats from the Neilsen poll I posted the other day, meet the following criteria:

They [Christians] are convinced (94 per cent) that Christ was a historical figure; fairly confident (91 per cent) that He was the Son of God; increasingly sceptical (72 per cent) about the Virgin Birth; and oddly – considering its key importance to the faith – uncertain that He rose from the dead (85 per cent). These beliefs are held very confidently. The Nielsen poll found almost nine out of 10 Australian Christians were absolutely or fairly certain of their beliefs.

If these numbers are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt them. Then why on earth do we spend Christmas literally preaching to the “converted” that Jesus is Lord. They know that. What they don’t know is that being a follower of Jesus can not be an apathetic and convenient association where you touch base with Jesus once or twice a year and expect it to all pan out in the end.

All Christmas sermons are the same – they proclaim Jesus as the promised Messiah, the one who would bring peace with God. Emmanuel. God with us. And yet – in all probability the people in the building already believe that.

This is the problem with branding Christianity with John 3:16 and the idea that “belief” as in “I believe in Japan” is what saves you. The mechanics of salvation can’t be explained with that single verse – or am I missing something.

Here’s a passage someone should preach on one Christmas. I dare you. Matthew 7:21-23

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

On a wing and a prayer

We all know Santa couldn’t possibly exist because of the sheer workload involved in delivering so many presents (here’s a study)…

But apparently Angels, as we understand them – based on representations in art, and on top of Christmas Trees – are anatomically unable to fly.

Prof Roger Wotton, from University College London, found that flight would be impossible for angels portrayed with arms and bird-like feathered wings.

Even a cursory examination of the evidence in representational arts shows that angels and cherubs cannot take off and cannot use powered flight,” said Prof Wotton. “And even if they used gliding flight, they would need to be exposed to very high wind velocities at take off – such high winds that they would be blown away and have no need for wings.

Literarily speaking

I was thinking tonight – while sitting in a Christmas Eve service in Dalby – that I don’t understand why the liberals or “progressives” are so keen to see the narratives of the birth of Jesus as “metaphors” or hyperbole. Not because that’s what the church in Dalby did – the Christmas story was presented in all its glory.

The story of an unlikely conception, occurring in such a way that the baby arrived in a city that did not have room to receive the incoming “king”, who was pursued ruthlessly by a rival king, and heralded by angels is a story laden with significant metaphors and literary devices – I just don’t know why the presence of metaphors makes the truth of the story any less likely.

It seems the liberal and progressive arm of Christianity isn’t prepared to cut God any slack to act in a creative way. Why shouldn’t we expect God to use metaphors, similes and miracles? Jesus spent a fair bit of time teaching in parables. I just don’t get the mindset that says that God firstly must act in a way consistent with our scientific observations and secondly limits him to acting and communicating in a mundane and boring manner. If Jesus was just an ordinary baby born in an ordinary way there’d be nothing to celebrate about his arrival.

And I still can’t get my head around what you have left if you toss out all the supernatural bits of God. If you don’t believe that God could cause a virgin to conceive or the dead to be raised then what’s the point?

Merry Christmas.

Well, well, well

Dave Miers is raising money to buy wells in Cambodia. You should head over to his blog and read the post and think about donating.

Once you’ve done that you should do your last minute “really useful gift” shopping at the St Eutychus Store. Buy some food for some kids who don’t eat good…

There isn’t enough time for cards to be sent out before Christmas – so you’ll have to do the environmentally responsible thing and select an e-card.

The slippery slope of liberalism

In the grand scheme of “who annoys Nathan most” there’s a battle between the rabid anti-theists and the waffling liberals.

They seem unlikely bedfellows. But liberals like Spong and his ilk, and atheists like Dawkins, work off each other in a symbiotic way – both pulling people away from Christianity like a fat frog pulls moths away from a lamp.

Today I read a post where an atheist asked what religious believer fellow atheists would mourn in death – and many admitted an admiration for Spong – some even claimed that it was reading Spong that lead to their atheism.

I’ll be sad when John Shelby Spong passes away. It was by reading his writings that I started to shed my fundamentalist views, and if it were not for him, I would not be the happy atheist I am today.

Then I read this article on the Sydney Morning Herald about how significant Jesus is to history. The author, a politician, couldn’t quite decide what his response to this historical Jesus should be…

From whatever perspective we come, thinking people ought to be able to agree, the birth of Jesus was a good day for mankind. I suspect I may never quite shake the childlike hunch that there is some uniquely divine imprint on the central individual of the human story. Happy Birthday, Jesus.

But the rabid commenters on the article were quick to point out what his response should be.

I don’t believe the arguement that without religion we would not have morals, if we followed the morals of the Church we would be burning alternative medecine practitioners (aka witches) and would say goodbye multicultural Australia. Sorry Christmas day is a sad day for humanity it made hatred justifiable.

The anti-slavery movement was founded in Enlightenment principles — all men are equal, and all that — principles that the Christian churches fought every step of the way, until at the very last the unquestionably correct fight was joined by some fringe (at the time) Protestants.

It’s funny how we all read history differently and often with the prejudice that comes with our philosophical views.

Once you get to the point of liberalism – of distrusting and second guessing the only account we have of God communicating to the world, or of reinterpreting history through a postmodern lens, you may as well pack the whole thing in. Which is why this “shocking” billboard campaign from a Liberal Anglican church in New Zealand doesn’t actually shock me at all… it saddens me.

It creates a dichotomy between “progressive” Christianity and “fundamentalist” Christianity. What it actually means is people who reject the Bible and read it through the lens of culture and people who believe the Bible and interpret culture through it. When did they think the Bible was culturally relevant? Was the culture of Corinth – where a man was permissibly sleeping with his step mum – really that much different to our sex charged culture today? Did people really only discover sexual freedom in the 1960s?

Here are some quotes.

Fundamentalism believes that Christianity is essentially about individual salvation and admission to an after-life off the planet. What one believes rather than how one behaves is paramount. This planet is merely a testing ground.

Progressive Christianity however emphasizes behaviour above belief. How one treats ones neighbours, enemies, and planet is the essence of faith. The celebration of the birth of Jesus is a celebration of God in every birth and every person.

For fundamentalist Christians the incarnation is about the miraculous arrival of a baby soon to die and by his blood save us. For progressive Christians the incarnation is about the miracle of this planet earth and all life that exists here.

It came with a pretty bizarre string of comments where people clearly struggle to articulate a cohesive logical view on the incarnation from a “progressive” standpoint.

This one is from a commenter named Matthew who shared a series of statements he no doubt believes are quite profound.

“If Jesus is the product of divine insemination (in whatever format) and not the seed of Joseph, then he is not human, his crucifixion means nothing because he has no connections to humanity, it’s just God killing himself to prove he can.

If however (as must be true) Jesus is an enlightened being birthed from the union of a man and a woman, then his life and his death can be seen as a statement of the possibilities of humanity, not some freak show that simply excites Mel Gibson fans.”

I’d counter this claim with the notion that if Jesus isn’t part divine then all aspects of his divinity are lost and the whole thing falls down. If he’s just human then there’s nothing that “connects” him to God. And why does Jesus require a human father in order to be human? Why isn’t a human mother sufficient? There are so many problems with the logic of the supernatural when people try to translate it into a rational framework.

If it “must be true” that God can’t intervene in the womb of a person then what’s the point of having a God to begin with? What’s the point in believing in a God who didn’t become flesh?

At that point it’s far more honest to be an atheist and join some sort of community group like Rotary where you actually do good things and don’t cause trouble for the true believers – though one suspects Spong isn’t actually too disappointed by the fact that his teachings lead to atheism.

Get elfed

Elf Yourself is a cool viral Christmas greeting card generator. You should check it out.

You should also check out the Flash Mob inspired ad the service put together…

Have yourself a very wooden Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner. Shops are setting up their displays, playing Christmas Carols and being generally annoying.

If I was going to set up a nativity scene in my house – or anywhere actually – I would totally consider this minimalistic set designed by German Oliver Fabel (and available, apparently, in both English and German)…

That’s cool right? But where’s the dragon from Revelation 12. We need an extra block… here’s a photoshop nativity I did for a sermon on Revelation 12 last December.

Boxing Day Sales

How come shops can knock 40% off the price of things on Boxing Day? Doesn’t this just mean they’re purposefully ripping us off for the rest of the year. Particularly in the lead up to the Christmas cash cow.

Merry (belated) Christmas

The title speaks for itself really.

My question from this Christmas is: Why don’t we sing carols all year round? Especially “O Holy Night”… although I can take or leave my little sister’s interpretive dance on that number.