Time for the Holidays

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years Day.

By the time this posts, Thanksgiving will be over. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday will have passed and Cyber Monday will begin. Christmas decorations have been in the stores for a few weeks. Ads have been on TV for about as long. Commercialism runs rampant and the meaning of the holidays is lost. In my opinion.

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a day of giving thanks for all that we’ve received for the year. My family (siblings, nieces and nephews, I don’t have a family of my own, except the feline variety) and I do give thanks for the blessing we’ve received. However, I do fall victim to the NFL games on TV, especially the game the Lions are in. Hopefully that doesn’t make me a hypocrite.

Christmas is a blur. Again, I’m with family, we exchange gifts, have a big meal, and fall into a food coma afterward. Sometimes, it’s depressing. Christ is not talked about. It’s all about buying the perfect gift. Spending money on each other. Gimme, gimme, gimme. As I got older, the more I didn’t want to buy gifts. It’s pointless.

However, as I’ve seen on billboards and a few ads: Christ is the Reason for the Season.

Yes, there are exceptions which follow this rule.

It was either last year or the year before, my sister, her husband and I took a trip to Crossroads Village and Huckleberry Railroad in Flint, Michigan. They have a Christmas light show within the village and the train takes you on a tour of displays in the area. It was fantastic! Although it was mostly secular, there were nativity and other light displays which remember the Reason for the Season.

Of course, there’s the little country church I attend. After Thanksgiving, we break out the Christmas carol books and sing those songs and hymns through December.

Many years ago, we’d have a Christmas band play the carols while others sang. My family is heavy into music. Not just my immediate family, but aunts, uncles, cousins. Most played instruments, but my immediate family could also sing. My Mom, brother, sister and I sang four-part harmony. We weren’t going to be on America’s Got Talent, but we could hold a tune. (Dad, sadly, could not.) There are recordings of some of those performances. I think my sister has them…somewhere.

Those performances were the Reason for the Season. Singing for Christ. Playing for Christ. Remembering Christ came to Earth for us. He died for our sins. He died for us. The final sacrifice.

Oh, and New Years? Heh, I don’t even stay up anymore. It’s just another day…of football.

What else is going on?

I have spurts of changes on the website. Updates to art will be sporadic. Some will come from Jones House Creative, as development time becomes available. Some will come from my Midjourney account, again, as credits become available.

I’ve made changes to the Psionics System pages to make it easier to add items to it without making a huge page to search through.

I still have a laundry list of items to update on the site which I’ll tackle, as time permits.

Writing Progress Report

Canthany: Genesis is progressing. I submitted the first chapter to the ACFW Scribes critiquing group and received lots of comments and suggestions. So much so that I split the first chapter into two and expanded both. I resubmitted the new chapter one and will resubmit chapter two soon. Chapters three and four have been written and part of chapter five.

I may be writing a short story for submission to a contest or two. It will depend on how much time I can devote to it. The deadline for one contest is December 15, the other January 31. Not sure I can make the earlier one, but I should be able to hit the second.

That’s it for now!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! God Bless you all!