What were the shepherds expecting with the birth of Jesus, I wonder.

Did the multitude of the heavenly host have a better idea?

Joseph and Mary were bewildered by the whole experience. Elizabeth and Zechariah must have been at least equally short on specifics.

The maji came to honor a King who was born to be a king, although he had no more claim to being a “son of David” than any other boy born into that tribe.

Herod had a hunch, and a slaughter ensued. The boy Jesus was prophesied to be a King, and a King isn’t a shy, retiring type. A King doesn’t suffer rivals to his throne.

The shepherds were told that a Savior was born, not a king, but people get sloppy with their logic.

When the Pope said something to the effect that all creatures have a place in Paradise, some said he said that animals have souls. Reminds me of the “stumbling block” spoken of in the Bible.

Does every type of creature in Heaven have to have a soul? I accept that if by “soul” is meant some type of durable essence that can be unique to the creature as a creation of God, which is probably not always going to be what we think of as a “soul.”

Is Heaven somehow tarnished because there’s something there that doesn’t have a “soul?” At a concert last week, a song had lyrics about how when this guy gets to Heaven, the first thing he’ll do is call his dog, and of course his dog will have been there waiting for him all along.

“No!” the hairsplitters will object. “First you will have to perform various and sundry rituals of contrition and obeisance and worship and then you shall be fitted into garments and assigned a place.” The listener is distracted with amusement over wondering how these people know this stuff, why they get so worked up about it, and how hilarious it would be if they were proven wrong.

Sloppy with logic, sloppy with lives. For us non-professional theologians, is it possible not to get a little sloppy when one is wondering about the great eschatological realities?

The shepherds were told that a Savior was born, and we take that for granted. It’s a word with a definition, and we know all about how faith in Jesus leads to eternal life.

But whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, some of us still struggle with the concept of Savior.

What do we pray for? What do people ask a King for?

We want justice, King! We want equality, compassion, mercy, a healthy environment. If you’re not predisposed to pursue these objectives, O King, kindly say so. Step aside for someone more to our liking

We want what we want, and we want it to be right for us to want those things.

We want a divine endorsement of our agendas.

We demand a Savior who will save us from ourselves.

We do not want a King who seems to leave us to our own devices, helpless, at the mercy of the wicked.

Christmas passes as a day of preoccupation with who gave what to who and who got what, as a day of loneliness and sadness, a day of memories, a day of joy, just another day.

What did God want for Christmas? Because, in Jesus, what He got for Himself was a mother, in Mary, a father, in Joseph, and sisters and brothers, in us.

If we have the truly human souls to want them, we have, for Christmas, a Father in God, a Mother in Mary, a Savior in Jesus, sisters and brothers in each other, and, in Heaven, a home.

The body is a great teacher of truths that are beyond dispute, because there is no arguing over whether you have a headache or not, or a toothache, an earache, a stuffy nose, or a cough. The body suffers real pains that can be medicated away. What did people do before aspirin was invented?

A parable that has always confused me concerns the person whose house was infested by a demon. The demon was expelled, and the house tidied up. When the demon saw the house tidied up, he invited seven even-worse demons to join him in reoccupying the house, and the man was worse off than ever.

Yesterday, during day four of a ravaging sickness, I discerned some insight into that parable.

Say you sprain your ankle while jogging. For the rest of your life, you will have suffered that sports injury, and at the first irregularity in that ankle, you’ll remember that sprain, aware that you always knew that ankle would henceforth be vulnerable. If you favor that ankle, your motion will be unnatural, with abnormal stress placed on other bodily parts, leaving them vulnerable to injury.

I had a bad tooth once that took a while to be handled. The dentist told me, until the tooth could be treated, I shouldn’t chew on that side of my mouth. I was rather shocked that the dentist would suggest in such cavalier fashion that I throw all those teeth under the bus. I had no choice but to follow his advice, which I had been doing anyway, of course, though I regretted having to do what was not in the long-term best interests of all those other teeth, many of which were probably just a hard malted milk ball away from cracking themselves.

Sickness enters in, and the body fights it off. But the germ thinks, I have beaten him before, and I can beat him again, so six days ago, he sneaks in and manifests his presence in the form of my sinus infection.

Preoccupied by that, the body focuses its defenses on the infected nostril, leaving the other nostril, the throat, etc., undefended. So here come the other seven demons. Both nostrils are infected, the throat becomes raw from coughing, the voice can hardly speak, the chest is full of the stuff flowing out of the sinuses, and that stuff then also runs rampant through the stomach. Instead of fighting one demon symptom, the body is embroiled in struggles against several demon symptoms.

Jesus made a career of expelling demons, rebuking fevers and such, and telling parables. That He would stir those elements together in compelling, sometimes-confusing fashion, is easily understood.

Maybe I don’t have the definitive explanation of the parable cited above, but as I lie awake coughing uncontrollably, trying to fight off this sickness, I can sincerely relate this experience to a battle against an invasion of demons!

Who were the leaders in the band? The dissenters, the mercenaries, the disgruntled, the true believers? When a band breaks up, the individuals come to the fore.

Genesis had members who fit all those molds, at any given time, and played different roles at different times.

After these five decades, mysteries remain, especially for us who choose not to seek out the stories, the lyrics we still can’t and don’t want to decipher.

Steve Hackett is a true believer. That is why he puts together a band to play the old Genesis songs worldwide in venues large and small.

Last night, Steve Hackett and his band played the Moore Theater in Seattle, Washington. Strange, to see a show and know by heart every song, to recognize songs before their second notes. To hear The Fountain Of Salmacis, that guitar sound one has loved for 40 years.

Strange to go back 40 years, to see a blue-lit stage that could have been the stage on the cover of Genesis “Live.” Could we, we would go back to that moment. “How many have longed to see what you see, and hear what you hear!” I thought, imagining the thoughts of a 20-year-old in 1973 being told that, in 2014, he would be hearing that music again in a small theater in Seattle. Last night’s show was, in that way, as special as those old shows with Genesis.

Missing was what became the trademark sound of post-Gabriel Genesis: the wash of keyboards from Tony Banks. Hackett’s keyboardist Roger King ably plays Banks’ parts. One wonders, though– how has that old music evolved in the mind of Tony Banks? How would he play all that now, the author of the intro to Watcher Of The Skies ( no piece of music is dearer to me than that, and a thrill it was to hear it amid deep blue lights) and my favorite musician of all time? I would rather Mr. Banks play the music he hears now than the music he played then, sure that, as some of us think, perfection is a thing that evolves?

How would Peter Gabriel reimagine the old songs, and inhabit his old characters? The dashing young Moonlit Knight, the lecherous old man of The Musical Box, the Messiah of Supper’s Ready?

Phil Collins, were he able to play, might not be the hyperactive drummer of old. How would his advanced artistry inform his interpretations and technique?

Could Michael Rutherford strum a 12-string as fiercely as his counterpart Nick Beggs did last night? If he chose not to, what he chose to play instead would assure us that, all these years later, his musicianship will have evolved as we all have evolved in our artistry. What he would play, we couldn’t anticipate, but it would make sense.

That is why we long for a reunion of Gabriel, Banks, Hackett, Rutherford, and Collins– to see who they are now.

I didn’t wear my “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” shirt last night because I’m shy about it, but I live in hope that the band will reunite and go on a tour that features “The Lamb” played in its entirety.

Meanwhile, Steve Hackett makes good decisions. Multi-instrumentalist Rob Townsend complementing drummer Roger O’Toole’s percussion, playing flute and saxophone, is an excellent idea.

Steve’s emphasis on his guitar parts was to lovely effect, as he quietly strummed the conclusion to “Fly On A Windshield.”

Nad Sylvan had the unenviable task many of us would kill for– sing those songs! When I pass a room with a microphone and a podium, I always want to sing, “Walking across the sitting room….” I wouldn’t get much further than that.

In a tribute to long-time Seattle Post-Intelligencer rock critic Gene Stout, let it be noted that Mr. Hackett was draped in a fine scarf, black boots, and still has amazing hair. The crowd was old,  thunderous, and under the influence of cannabis.

What isn’t credited enough is that Genesis was a band that truly pummeled the audience. “The Return Of The Giant Hogweed,” to my knowledge, hasn’t been cited as an influence on heavy metal and such, but we saw last night that, especially in a live setting, much of Genesis isn’t for the delicate of hearing.

Thanks to Steve Hackett for remaining a true believer all these years, and for providing a special night for all of us true believers whose belief is that never has there been a better time to be alive than now, largely because we have so much music in our lives, and we have known a band the likes of which never have we seen anything close– Genesis!

Theoretically, I told my family of three, yes–by all means–absolutely and for sure we could hop into the minivan and go someplace to cut down a tree to be our Christmas tree.

But where are we going? Shall we pull onto some dark corner, scramble down a brambly hill, whack an unsuspecting tree and squeeze it into the van? No no no no no.

Let us begin with the Internet. Find a place nearby that is professional, where we shall not be overmatched by the elements, where we will be comforted by infrastructure and guided through the whole stinkin’ process of helping to lay bare brown a verdant green hillside or whatever.

Charlie Brown in that Christmas tree lot was ahead of his time. We still don’t have trees as spectacular as those giant aluminum trees, but today’s artificial Christmas tree is a fine piece of work. The changing LED lights are so enchanting that one can come to peace with the fact that he didn’t design and install these lights himself, but he did have sense enough to appreciate a well-lit tree and go with that, rather than look at his own lights, wondering why (knowing all too well why) he somehow cannot bring to fruition the dazzling vision in his head.

If one can find the storage space for it, one needn’t toss a tinsel wrapped spine of broken brown limbs onto the street for the garbage. Few artificial trees ever look as sad as those discarded Christmas trees awaiting collection. As someone who can’t throw away a pair of socks without a heartfelt farewell, it’s not in me to rush into that melancholia.

But the Mrs. wants a real tree, and her reasons are persuasive. A 2-year-old boy can have worse things at Christmas than a genuine tree acquired in a process of which he was a part, so I can explain how it works.

The Christmas tree farm is divided into four sections: Noble, Grand, Nordmann, Douglas Fir.

We did much the same, unscientific thing we did when we went to the shelter to get a dog– we saw one we liked and that sealed it.

The farm provides saws to cut down the trees, which, young trees as they are, are not dense enough to present a physical challenge. A machine allows two young men to stuff the tree into a sort of net, in which it is wrapped in plastic and carried to the owner’s vehicle. String is provided to tie the wrapped tree to the top of the van.

It was after tying the tree to the car that we set out to see the rest of the tree farm. I told my son that Santa might be hiding in the trees, so he went around yelling, “Santa! Where are you?”

Our Nordmann fir survived the trip home. We unwrapped it ad put it in the brand-new tree stand we bought at the local hardware store on our way up to the farm. The needles pushing out of its trunk all up the trunk is an odd feature, but it’s a handsome tree. Before we left, we measured the space so we could be sure the tree we brought home would fit into the available space, but we still had to trim off the top of it.

Our son now has for his first Christmas tree one that is almost three times his size, going all the way up to the roof.

He can enjoy that, and the ethical dilemmas can wait for later.

One type of children’s book tries to entertain both parents and kids, and isn’t as much fun as it purports to be for anyone. Another type doesn’t try to entertain adults at all. Another type manages to entertain both. Dr. Seuss comes to mind as preeminent in that field.
The Christmas season is the epic time of year for attempts to entertain both kids and adults.
Years ago, I decided I would put up Christmas lights in the window of my shabby little apartment. Not many people did that in the neighborhood, so there was the added discomfort of drawing attention to myself. And as a mere apartment renter, one can feel guilty of a bloated sense of self-importance in putting up Christmas lights, traditionally such a middle-class, suburban, home-owner thing to do.
That year, I decided I would get a small string of purple lights. After putting them up, I walked out in the street to see how they looked. I’ll never forget standing out in the street, shivering, with so much happiness in my heart as I looked up at those festive little purple lights!
As a husband and father, with a house, the opportunities are spectacular for decorating the yard and house. It’s a responsibility to our little boy, to provide him with moments of wide-eyed wonder, though there’s sadness too in trying to create memories that he might look back on someday with a wish that he could do something like it in circumstances that might not be as hospitable as ours now are, for however long.
Will he have a house with a fireplace? A tree in the front yard wrapped in colorful lights, and decorated with oversized gold, silver, red and green balls? Backyard trees wrapped in lights, decorated? Not things that cost a lot, or are difficult to set up, but having the family, and the house, and the family with the common tradition of Christmas? Good luck with that, kid.
I went three decades on my own before all these things fell into place, and I got lucky. Maybe my son won’t have the same good luck. It’s likely that what we have won’t seem special to him until long after it’s ended. Maybe he’ll be a happy, well-groomed, wholesome, faithful young man, with genuine reverence for the family traditions. Maybe not.
But that’s the faith of Christmas: the magic of the lights, trees, decorations, the traditions, the ceremonies, the memories; that parents believe we can create the atmosphere and experiences that will take root as reservoirs of happiness in children that they will cherish all through their lives.