A Christmas Story

Actually, this is an image of Detroit

The silly title represents the current state of my mind. Cluttered, ruined, and absolutely exhausted. With finals on the way, I spent most of my time trying to put myself together in preparation for the exams.

This task is especially challenging when all the final examinations are to comprehensive. Hence, there hasn't been any worthwhile blog post on this site for a few weeks. To amend it, I decided to share some quick thoughts here.

I've overheard many buzz about Megyn Kelly of Fox News recently and I found the debate over Santa and Jesus's ethnicity to be nothing less than bigotry and ignorance. It is quite saddening how extremists in this country don't know what they believe.

It's true that many depictions of these persons have been white caucasians. That is mostly culture rather than historical accuracy. In fact, digging through Wikipedia will tell you that both Jesus and Santa, who is loosely based on St. Nicholas, lived nowhere near Western Europe.

One of the reasons for the caucasian depictions is the widespread adaptation of these two characters in Europe, especially Western Europe. Since most of the people in earlier times were not literate, it made sense to Europeanize the arts and images to what the populace could relate to and understand. I'm sure if Christianity took a strong hold in India, instead of Europe, after Christ's time, we would see more Indian-looking Savior in popular culture. With that said, the similar scenario applies to Santa.

Does it really matter? It shouldn't, but it does. People forget why we hold these two men in high-esteem. I don't know about you, but I like Jesus and Santa because of what they did, not what they looked like. To all Christians who are outraged by some people's depiction of a black Jesus, etc., ask yourself, do you follow the Man, or do you follow His looks?

To me, as long as it's not a demeaning or satirical depiction of these two characters, I could care less what people choose to represent their love and respect for them.

Which comes to Christmas...we all know the day comes from pagan roots, and yet we universally agree to deem December 25th to be the day when the Lord came to the world. Historians and many LDS people understand that the real time of birth was probably closer to spring and most likely in April.

So, why do we celebrate Christmas? Well, sure as heck isn't because that WAS the day of His birth. It's a day to commemorate the Savior, who came into the world to do His Father's will (John 5:19). For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).


Anyways, I thought I should take a break from studying and share this message. I learned this morning that my parasitology final will be massive, which threw off my study plans. So, I'm going to spend more time today reviewing things I should know before tomorrow at 07:00...