Happy New Year!

What is up everybody? How was your Christmas? Excelent I do hope. For me, it was extremely insaneo hectic, what with visiting family and whatnot. Man, this year the usual family trip to Ajax for our big family get together took three days. It was crazy. Anyway, I just wanted to drop a line and wish y'all a happy New Year. Have fun, and if your of age (and want to), be sure you drink responsibly and have a designated driver. Just looking out for you!

Michael

Christmas is right around the corner

Ok, so today is the 22nd, the eve of the eve of Christmas eve. The insanity is mounting as we struggle to finish whatever Christmas shopping we have left. (I personally am not finished...) Meanwhile, we who still are struggling to get through the long school hours are slowly counting the seconds. In the midst of all this chaos, please remember the real reason for the season. It is difficult, considering the ammount of junk around us, but we can do it.

Michael

3 days!!

To Xmas or not to Xmas, that is the question

Ok, so at the top of the hill by my house there is a church. And beside that chuhrch is a rent-a-sign that the church puts little messages, advertising, on. The current message starts something like this. "No Xmas here." A short message, but one that packs a lot of meaning. They say that "Xmas" is supposed to be an abreviation on Xristos, which was the Greek word for Christ, and so on, but really it is a way of taking CHRIST out of CHRISTmas. Sure you could argue that it is politically correct (but is it really? I mean with all those other unpolitically correct things around...) but a lot of the religious holidays (I guess I can say that considering how secularized Christmas has become) are copying themes from Christmas. (Menorah tree anyone?). Anyway, taking Christ out of Christmas is like having Cookie Monster without a cookie. Unthinkable.

Merry christmas.

Michael

ps. somehow this took me over a week to write. srry!

Are You Excited?

Hey oh!

'tis December 5th and the Christmas Season is upon us. The Advent candles are out and we are supposed to be reflecting on the meaning of the season. Helped out of course by the advertising moguls of our media saturated culture who are intent on getting us to buy their products. Its sad really. I wonder if the Magi thought that thi gifts would start a trend of saturating people with advertising to convince them to spend, spend, spend. Christ's selfless act of giving himself to His creation, while generally associated with Easter, can also be taken into account during the Christmas season. Christmas is a celebration of Christ's coming, one of the many things He did to save us. This season we should be giving of ouselves to do smething to help those around us. Whether it is shoveling your neighbour's driveways or giving o food drives, or even caroling, we can and need to change our perspective from the "me, me, me" season Christmas has become to the "you, you, you" season it should be. J.O.Y.

merry CHRISTmas

Michael