This year, I'm very Santi. That's Anti-Santa. I don't believe in him, of course, because I don't believe in jolly fat men delivering gifts all around the world. I definitely believe in Christmas miracles, in Christmas love, in Christ, but the whole idea of Santa rrreeeeeeally bugs me this year. I haven't voiced it much since I'm really sour about it and I don't want to get carried away. I know who delivers gifts from person to person. Besides the obvious one person to another, it's UPS. Gifts come in brown before they ever come in green and red and silver and gold. I've experienced being a driver helper, a "Santa" helper first hand. That's probably the main reason I'm so Santi. It just isn't a fun idea to me anymore. Feeling that way backwardly makes me feel out of the Christmas Spirit. That bothers me more than Santa does.
I like the actual idea behind Christmas. The one about it being a birthday celebration. The birth of the Savior of the world's entire population. That's a great idea. That's a great reason to give gifts to one another. I mean, hey! We can all be saved because of one person? Let's celebrate and cushion our lives with blessings and remember the poor and hungry as we're out and about gifting. What a gift for Our Father to send His willing Son to give us life, a chance for everlasting life. Now that's the greatest of all gifts I could ever imagine up. It's a better idea to have be true than fat with a beard in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. A much better idea. And, in fact, a true idea.
I'm Santi because of how distracting the material things are exploding all around us. It's good to give gifts. The wise men visited Christ as a child bearing gifts. I think Christmas really is all about gifts. Like I said, the greatest of all gifts is commemorated with this holiday. But gift giving is more a symbolic reminder than the point, as sometimes it seems the holiday becomes about. So, it's a fine line, and a subtle deviation. It's simple, like how the same letters in Santa make up the letters in Satan. :) heh. Just a little switch and the whole meaning changes!
There's a store called Deseret Industries, D.I. for short. My dad just loves to go there. You can find screaming deals there sometimes. My dad is obsessed with accomplishing a triathalon soon and he's exercising a lot. At D.I. he's found quite a few sweet bicycles to restore to help him with his preparation; bikes that would usually be thousands of dollars he's purchased for just a few hundred. Anyway, so I went to D.I. and bought a small quilting circle, red yarn, metal measuring spoons, some bendable green wire stuff, some weird-shaped, other metal things, a wire-ish, plastic Christmas tree thing, and a pot lid. I didn't know how it would all go together, but I was planning to make a wind chime. When on Christmas eve it was together and complete and better than I could have imagined it would turn out, I was so full of excitement (too full, perhaps?) that I could hardly wait to show him. Christmas morning I took the left over lump of red yarn, wrapped a little around the quilting circle and led the string to his stocking and plopped the ball of yarn on the top of his candy. His was the first gift to be "opened" (we, especially me, were tripping over the yarn) and we all followed him to where it was hanging in my room. He hung it outside after we opened gifts. It's amazing how it really sounds great. If I can figure out how to put pictures on this dumb thing, I'll take a picture of it and post it.
It brings me and I do believe him a lot of joy. That's what I loved the most about this Christmas. That and my sister and I got each other the same thing. We're too much alike sometimes it's creepy. I love Christmas, Christ, and my beautiful family!
