Category Archives: faith

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Crafting a rule of life

This week I audited a course at Regent College in Vancouver, called Taking Your Soul to Work.  (I really enjoyed this week of professional development and vacation, and I’m already thinking about doing it again next year.)  Going into the course, I was excited to learn about a theology of work, but I didn’t realize how much of the content would be drawn from historical Christian traditions such as desert monasticism, the Benedictine Rule, and Ignatian spirituality.

The main action item I gave myself based on the course is to craft my own rule of life, which is a new concept for me. A rule of life is a slate of spiritual disciplines, developed on one’s own and/or with the input of trusted advisors, to be incorporated into one’s life at set intervals: daily, weekly, annually, etc. Despite the rigid connotations of the word “rule,” the term in this context implies a “life-giving rhythm” (to quote Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Matthew 11:28-30 in The Message).  Rather than more items on a to-do list, the disciplines are a way to become aware of God’s presence amidst the “secular” activities of one’s life.  (Another idea we discussed in this class: There’s no such thing as a secular activity.)

A rule of life can include, among many others, such practices as observing a weekly Sabbath rest, reading Scripture daily, praying the examen prayer (more on this is a later post), and taking a semi-annual silent retreat.  My initial instinct is to sit down for an hour and quickly knock out a rule for my life, but I think it will be wiser to process what I’ve learned this week and craft my rule one item at a time.  My plan is to blog about this process along the way.  Want to join me?

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encore: Easter and The Walking Dead

Now I understand why people become professional bloggers. It’s a lot easier to remember to blog when it’s your job.

It’s not my job, but I do plan to get back into posting semi-regularly. Meanwhile, here’s a post I wrote three years ago around this time of year.

This will be a quick post in which I don’t intend to say anything new or profound, except in the sense that the gospel is always profound. I just think the co-occurrence of The Walking Dead‘s season finale with Easter Sunday is too good an opportunity to pass up. If you’re a TWD fan, you’ve probably already noticed this conjuncture and have been tweeting little jokes about it all week. While I can appreciate this subcategory of morbidly irreverent humor, I want to remind us all of a few basic yet important truths.

We often forget that Christ’s resurrection means our resurrection too. Do a search on occurrences of the term “first-fruits” in the Bible–in the Old Testament, you’ll get instructions about bringing your produce to the temple, but in the New Testament, you’ll find all kinds of good doctrine, most if not all from Paul, about how Christ’s resurrection was only the first in a series of resurrections. There will indeed be a day when “all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth” (John 5:28-29). It sounds a lot like a Romero-esque scenario in which “the dead will walk the earth,” EXCEPT THAT THEY WON’T BE DEAD. The difference between reanimation–when corpses become mobile–and resurrection–when formerly dead people live again–couldn’t be more pronounced.

So when you watch The Walking Dead tomorrow night and you see all those rotting bodies stumbling around outside the gate of the prison where our friends are holed up, don’t think for a minute that this is what the Bible means when it talks about the defeat of death. There won’t be anything creepy about the resurrection, just like there isn’t anything creepy about having an Easter sunrise service in a cemetery (I saw a sign for one of those while driving past Alta Vista, VA, yesterday). And when you attend a church service tomorrow morning, as I hope you do (whether it’s at sunrise or not), don’t think for a minute that Christ’s resurrection was just a past event that’s nice to remember but that has no effect on the present or future.

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” I Corinthians 15:58

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You and I are Edmund Pevensie.

I’m listening to the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  (By the way, I’m pretty much addicted right now to the FOTF Radio Theatre adaptations of classics, and I’ve nearly exhausted my church library’s stash.  If you have any recommendations in that series or other audio dramatizations I might enjoy, let me know, and I will start looking elsewhere.)  I’m remembering how much I love this story.  The title of my post is pretty obvious to anyone who’s even shallowly considered the Christian implications of C. S. Lewis’s classic.  Duh, of course Edmund represents the sinner who is redeemed by Christ’s (Aslan’s) sacrificial death.

But this time, I’ve been thinking about why it’s so easy for me to identify with this rather unpleasant little English boy from a time before I was born.  I’ve always liked Edmund most of the four siblings–Lucy is basically just cute; Peter is too heroic, and Susan (I hate to say it) is pretty boring.  But that doesn’t explain why I’m so overcome at that point when Aslan comes out of the tent with Edmund and says, “Here is your brother.  There is no need to talk to him about what is past.”  Certainly, I’m moved by the truth behind the scene, but allegory, true as it may be, can often be cold and dry.

I think the reason I identify with Edmund, and why most people, if honest with themselves, probably do too, is that his sins are so mundane.  He is not trying to take over the world; he is not flagrantly cruel; he does not craft audacious lies or tempt with the voice of Satan.  Those are the White Witch’s sins.  Edmund’s sins are a child’s sins: He is jealous of his older brother, pettily mean to his little sister, and generally cross with all of his siblings.  He does tell a few lies, but not the kind that could hurt anyone (so he thinks).  He wants people to recognize that he’s important.  And yeah, he loves sweets a bit too much.

These are a child’s sins, but adults don’t grow out of them.  All of these have been my sins, some of them often.  So that’s why this story means so much to me.  Jesus doesn’t just save flamboyantly evil sinners; he also saves sinners who are cranky, greedy, cowardly, and prideful despite not having very much to be proud about.

For more on unpleasant English boys (in Narnia and at Hogwarts), see my post Sometimes humility must come through humiliation.

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Jesus’ 30th birthday

Here’s an interesting fact: The English Romantic poet John Keats died when he was 25 years old, but not before he’d written some of the greatest odes in the English language.  I sometimes share this fact with my students, with a mild joke to the effect that they’d better get busy over the next few years.  Although I’m not trying to make my students feel like they’ve wasted their lives up to this point, I sometimes feel that way myself when I look at what I’ve accomplished and compare it with the accomplishments of luminaries in various fields.  The disparity is particularly striking when I compare myself with people, like Keats, who died very young.  Heath Ledger, for example, was only 28 when he passed away back in 2008, and he’d delivered a few stunning, even epoch-making performances in the few years prior.  [Did his Dark Knight tour de force usher in the dominance of the mischief/chaos-making villain in present film?  I think so, but that’s another blog post.]  And then, if you went to Christian school like me, you also have some big-name servants of God (I hesitate to call them rock-star martyrs) with whom to compare yourself, like David Brainerd, who died at 29 after wearing out his health in service to the Native Americans back in the 18th century.  It’s hard not to look at people like that and think, “Basically, I’ve accomplished nothing so far.”

I’m going to turn 30 next month.  So I took notice this morning when I read Luke 3:23a: “Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age.”  Until that point, Jesus had been living in obscurity, probably working alongside his adoptive father Joseph in the “secular” profession of carpentry.  During that time, we can assume that his heavenly Father was quietly preparing him for those crucial–and short–three years of ministry that would follow.  God the Father didn’t look down at Jesus on his 30th birthday and say, “You’ve been messing around building tables long enough; now it’s time to do some real Kingdom work.”  In fact, because we know that Jesus was sinless and that his whole life was directed toward a mission, we can confidently say that the tables were not a waste of time.  Backed by Colossians 3:23, we can go so far as to say that they were an act of worship to his Father.  Building tables was part of what Jesus was born to do and part of how he readied himself for the history-shattering events to come later.

It may be helpful to ask from time to time, “Have I accomplished anything that’s made an impact?”  It’s a tricky question, though, because our actions have effects that we don’t see and that we can’t control.  I think it’s more useful to ask, “What kind of person am I becoming?”  That, with God’s help, we can control.  So as my birthday approaches, I’m trying to tell myself that it’s okay that I haven’t written a poem to rival “Ode to a Nightingale.”  Here’s what I should really be asking myself: Am I loving?  Am I joyful?  Am I thankful?  And am I ready for whatever big things may come later?

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I don’t like me when I’m angry.

People don’t believe me when I say this, because I’m usually quite good-natured, but I get a bit violent when I’m angry.  My bursts of anger are quite brief–I don’t hold grudges–but my blood pressure shoots up dramatically, and I tend to react physically (or at least to want to react physically).  In other words, I turn into Little Hulk.  I say “Little” because I am about five foot two or three and not very strong.  That’s why people tend to think it’s funny or cute when I yell or punch a desk or jump on my sister (I did that several times when we were roommates).  I agree that it makes an amusing story, but ultimately it’s not very cute or funny, and here’s why.

1. Someday, I will probably have people in my life who are smaller than I am and whom I could actually hurt–i.e., children.

2. Anger gives me a temporarily useful adrenaline rush (I packed up my entire office in about an hour this morning when I was mad about a dumb thing, which I am now over), but I’m pretty sure it has negative physiological effects in the long term.  See, for example, my comment above about blood pressure.  I think people can also get ulcers from being angry too much.

3. Although, as Jesus demonstrated, righteous anger is…well, righteous, 99.9% of the time my anger has no such just cause.  Usually I’m angry because things aren’t going according to my selfish, carefully-constructed plan.  And that kind of anger has bad spiritual and relational effects on me and everyone around me.

So, although they asked me if I wanted to replace Mark Ruffalo in the next Avengers movie, I turned down the offer in order to preserve my holistic well-being.  Hey, don’t laugh; I think I’d be pretty believable.  It’s all CGI anyway, right?

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Easter every day

This morning, it was my turn to lead our weekly devotions at work, and I tried (through my scratchy allergy voice) to talk to about how Christ’s resurrection is not only a crucial historical event that means a great deal for the believer’s future, but that it also impacts the believer’s everyday life in the present.  This same theme came up later on as I was praying with a student over the phone and I said something about how we live in Christ’s resurrection power.  So you can imagine my delight this evening when I was reading Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child and I came across chapter six, “Present Risenness.”  Manning says everything I was trying to say today, and more.  I hope you’ll forgive me for quoting at length from the chapter.

Standing on a London street corner, G. K. Chesterton was approached by a newspaper reporter.  “Sir, I understand that you recently became a Christian.  May I ask you one question?”

“Certainly,” replied Chesterton.

“If the risen Christ suddenly appeared at this very moment and stood behind you, what would you do?”

Chesterton looked the reporter squarely in the eye and said, “He is.”

Is this a mere figure of speech, wishful thinking, a piece of pious rhetoric?  No, this truth is the most real fact about our life; it is our life.  The Jesus who walked the roads of Judea and Galilee is the One who stands beside us.  The Christ of history is the Christ of faith.

Biblical theology’s preoccupation with the resurrection is not simply apologetic–i.e., it is no longer viewed as the proof par excellence of the truth of Christianity.  Faith means receiving the gospel message as dynamis, reshaping us in the image and likeness of God.  The gospel reshapes the hearer through the power of Jesus’ victory over death.  The gospel proclaims a hidden power in the world–the living presence of the risen Christ.  It liberates men and women from the slavery that obscures in them the image and likeness of God.

What gives the teaching of Jesus its power?  What distinguishes it from the Koran, the teachings of Buddha, the wisdom of Confucius?  The risen Christ does.  For example, if Jesus did not rise we can safely praise the Sermon on the Mount as a magnificent ethic.  If He did, praise doesn’t matter.  The sermon becomes a portrait of our ultimate destiny.  The transforming force of the Word resides in the risen Lord who stands by it and thereby gives it final and present meaning.

I will say it again: The dynamic power of the gospel flows from the resurrection.  The New Testament writers repeated this: “All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).

When through faith we fully accept that Jesus is who He claims to be, we experience the risen Christ. . . .

. . . In other words, the resurrection needs to be experienced as present risenness.  If we take seriously the word of the risen Christ, “Know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time” (Matthew 28:20), we should expect that He will be actively present in our lives.  If our faith is alive and luminous, we will be alert to moments, events, and occasions when the power of resurrection is brought to bear on our lives.  Self-absorbed and inattentive, we fail to notice the subtle ways in which Jesus is snagging our attention.

I’ll stop here, but you should really read the whole book.  It can be hard for a Christian writer or speaker to convey a message that is kind, tender, and joyful without sliding off into doctrinal squishiness or compromise.  Brennan Manning walks that middle road with great care and wonderful effect.

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Charles Dickens on Christmas (no, not THAT story)

Good evening, readers, whom I have been sadly neglecting this year.  And merry Christmas.  I am probably losing some of you due to the fact that every time I have posted recently, my post has been about Charles Dickens.  It’s just that I love him, and you know how it is when you’re in love.  I actually bought a Charles Dickens finger puppet/refrigerator magnet the other day.  Yes, I did.

I promise that after this post, I’ll take a break from Charles Dickens.  But I want to quote him in this, my annual Christmas post.  (For previous years’ posts, click the “holidays” category in the menu on the left.  There’s an Easter post and a Thanksgiving post in there, but other than that, they’re all about Christmas.  Most years I’ve written more than one annual Christmas post.)  Every year, whether I write something funny or something profound, or a little of each, my goal is to get you to think about Jesus.  Christmas is his day, after all, even beyond the sense in which every day is his day.

Last night I read a few stories from a massive volume entitled The Selected Illustrated Works of Charles Dickens, purchased in the same transaction as the puppet/magnet.  I came across a piece I’d never read before, “The Seven Travellers,” composed of three short stories.  The piece ends with a description of the narrator’s walk home on a cold, quiet Christmas morning, during which everything reminds him of Jesus.  As soon as I read these few paragraphs, I knew I’d be letting Charles write my annual Christmas post for me.  Please enjoy this excerpt, and may the Founder of Christmas bless you richly.  [Note: A couple of the biblical references are a little obscure–a good reason to read, or re-read, the gospels!]

When I came to the stile and footpath by which I was to diverge from the main road, I bade farewell to my last remaining Poor Traveller, and pursued my way alone.  And now the mists began to rise in the most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine; and as I went on through the bracing air, seeing the hoarfrost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all nature shared in the joy of the great Birthday.

Going through the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt surrounded.  As the whitened stems environed me, I thought how the Founder of the time had never raised his benignant hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of one unconscious tree.  By Cobham Hall, I came to the village, and the churchyard where the dead had been quietly buried, “in the sure and certain hope” which Christmas time inspired.  What children could I see at play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them!  No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, for I remembered that the tomb was in a garden, and that “she supposing him to be the gardener,” had said, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”  In time, the distant river with the ships came full in view, and with it pictures of the poor fishermen, mending their nets, who arose and followed him–of the teaching of the people from a ship pushed off a little way from shore, by reason of the multitude–of a majestic figure walking on the water, in the loneliness of night.  My very shadow on the ground was eloquent of Christmas; for did not the people lay their sick where the mere shadows of the men who had heard and seen him might fall as they passed along?

Thus Christmas begirt me, far and near, until I had come to Blackheath, and had walked down the long vista of gnarled old trees in Greenwich Park, and was being steam-rattled through the mists now closing in once more, towards the lights of London.  Brightly they shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and the bright faces around it, when we came together to celebrate the day.

 

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Sometimes humility must come through humiliation

Luke 15:17-24 But when [the younger son] come to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!  I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  Make me like one of your hired servants.'”  And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.  And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against haven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.”  But the father said to his servants, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet.  And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”  And they began to be merry.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis, chapter 7 (Eustace’s story about turning from a dragon back into a boy)*: “Then the lion said” – but I don’t know if it spoke – “You will have to let me undress you.” I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phoney if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.

“After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me – ”

“Dressed you. With his paws?”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes – the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”

“No. It wasn’t a dream,” said Edmund.

“Why not?”

“Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been – well, un-dragoned, for another.”

“What do you think it was, then?” asked Eustace.

“I think you’ve seen Aslan,” said Edmund.

“Aslan!” said Eustace. “I’ve heard that name mentioned several times since we joined the Dawn Treader. And I felt – I don’t know what – I hated it. But I was hating everything then. And by the way, I’d like to apologize. I’m afraid I’ve been pretty beastly.”

“That’s all right,” said Edmund. “Between ourselves, you haven’t been as bad as I was on my first trip to Narnia. You were only an ass, but I was a traitor.”

“Well, don’t tell me about it, then,” said Eustace. “But who is Aslan? Do you know him?”

“Well – he knows me,” said Edmund. “He is the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, who saved me and saved Narnia. We’ve all seen him. Lucy sees him most often. And it may be Aslan’s country we are sailing to.”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling, chapter 30 There was a scuffling and a great thump: Someone else had clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen.  He pulled himself up on the nearest chair, looked around through lopsided horn-rimmed classes, and said, “Am I too late?  Has it started?  I only just found out, so I–I–”

Percy spluttered into silence.  Evidently he had not expected to run into most of his family.  There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension, “So–‘ow eez leetle Teddy?”

Lupin blinked at her, startled.  The silence between the Weasleys seemed to be solidifying, like ice.

“I–oh yes–he’s fine!” Lupin said loudly.  “Yes, Tonks is with him–at her mother’s–”

Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another, frozen.

“Here, I’ve got a picture!” Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph from inside his jacket and showing it to Fleur and Harry . . .

“I was a fool!” Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph.  “I was an idiot, I was a pompous part, I was a– a–”

“Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron,” said Fred.

Percy swallowed.

“Yes, I was!”

“Well, you can’t say fairer than that,” said Fred, holding out his hand to Percy.

Mrs. Weasley burst into tears.  She ran forward, pushed Fred aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Percy said.

Mr. Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug his son.

 

*The selection I really would have liked to include here is a passage from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that doesn’t actually exist: the talk that Aslan has with Edmund after rescuing him from the White Witch.  That talk takes place off-stage, and afterward Aslan simply says to the other children, “Here is your brother . . . and – there is no need to talk to him about what is past.”  The passage I’ve posted here isn’t quite what I wanted, but I thought of it because my sister posted a link on Facebook to a song by the Oh Hellos called “The Lament of Eustace Scrubb.”  And I do like this passage, because it features both of Narnia’s repentant sinners comparing notes about Aslan.

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Knowing your audience

I just wrote a contribution to the Faith Learning Integration Gallery on the website of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the university where I work.  I decided to share it with you, but since I don’t want to violate the principle my essay is about–understanding and showing consideration for one’s audience–I should let you know that the originally intended audience of this piece consisted of Christian faculty members at a Christian university.  If you’re not one of those people, please don’t feel alienated if you’re not included in the “we” that I refer to throughout the essay.  I think you’ll get at least something from it regardless of whether you’re part of that audience.

In both the Center for Writing and Languages and many of the writing courses offered here at Liberty, we place quite a bit of emphasis on the genres of writing.  Not only is academic writing just one correct way to write among many, but there are also many ways to do academic writing—a research paper, a lab report, a discussion board, a conference presentation.  Each genre has its own conventions, and each is appropriate to a particular context and audience.  Trying to apply the conventions of one genre in the wrong context—for example, following the rules of the literary analysis genre while writing a legal brief—can lead to confusion for both writer and audience.

As Christians charged with communicating a message, we need to remember a similar principle.  The gospel is a constant, unchanging message that can take on an infinite variety of forms.  As is the case when choosing a genre of academic writing, knowing one’s audience is crucial when communicating the gospel.  It’s even more crucial, actually, because although there may be some general principles for sharing the gospel with a particular demographic, such as children, God speaks, and uses us to speak, in a unique way to each person.

Speaking God’s words to real, non-abstract people takes emotional intelligence.  It takes empathy.  It takes the ability to analyze a situation and choose the right course of action.  As it turns out, it takes a lot of the same qualities that make a good writer. 

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Christmas miscellany

In my December 5 post I mentioned that I was considering writing a post on Stevie Wonder’s song “Someday at Christmas,” a Christmas song that I’m not ashamed to say makes me cry.  But the post I was crafting in my mind sounded a lot like the one I had just written about “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” (i.e., me waxing poetic and theological about a song which I would then quote), so I decided not to bore you.  Instead, I’ll briefly mention my thoughts on that song in my list of assorted observations I’ve made so far this month about classic Christmas music and movies.

  • If you believe Jesus is going to come a second time and recreate the world as a place of peace and justice, listen to “Someday at Christmas” with that in mind.  It would only take one or two little tweaks of the lyrics to make it an eschatological song.
  • You know that bird on the Island of Misfit Toys who doesn’t fly . . . he swims?  And you know how during the end credits of Rudolph, that elf in Santa’s sleigh sends each toy down to earth with an umbrella to ensure a safe and pleasant landing?  Well, the other night my friends and I noticed that THE ELF DOESN’T GIVE THE BIRD AN UMBRELLA!  I shouted, “That bird can’t fly!” and everyone laughed, but it was a rather tragic moment for this bird lover.
  • I watch White Christmas pretty much every year, and while it’s hard to resist Bing Crosby’s smooth, warm voice and soulful blue eyes, my real White Christmas crush is Danny Kaye, so debonair when he’s dancing and awkward when he’s not, and adorable either way.*  Until last night, I had always been under the impression that Danny Kaye was an unusually tall man, mainly because his ankles always seemed to be sticking out.  But last night when I was watching White Christmas, I looked closely at that scene near the end when all the soldiers are lined up to honor General Waverley, and I noticed that DK is actually shorter than the guys on either side of him.  So I looked him up on Wikipedia this morning, and it turns out that he was 5’11”–not short by any means, but not unusually tall.  I think one reason he looks tall in White Christmas is that he’s always next to Bing Crosby, a relatively little guy at 5’7”.  But another reason–the reason Danny Kaye’s ankles always seem to be sticking out–is that he’s often wearing his pants too short in what I believe is a deliberate move to show off his awesome socks, such as the mustard yellow ones he’s wearing in the scene where he fakes a broken ankle.  He executes this sartorial maneuver long before it was cool, of course, and it’s just one of several proto-hipster clothing choices that Danny Kaye–or at least his character, Phil Davis–makes throughout the movie, including a deft use of the cardigan.

Perhaps I’ll have some more epiphanies (no holiday pun intended) while watching The Muppet Christmas Carol, Love Actually, and any other Christmas movies I may end up watching over the next week, or while listening to Christmas music, such as the instrumental “Victorian Christmas” albums I was listening to earlier or Bing Crosby’s White Christmas (not affiliated with the movie), which I’m listening to right now.  Let me know about any keen observations you may have had as well!

*Speaking of Christmas movies and crushes on now-deceased actors, can I get a witness to Jimmy Stewart’s gorgeousness in It’s a Wonderful Life?