The World Needs More Unironic Glitter Glue (Or, I Can't Help Loving Christmas)

Image by Currier & Ives

by Lyndsey Graves 

I can’t help loving Christmas.

Sometimes I think it’s not very cool to love Christmas. Lots of people like to run around reminding everyone that it’s a pagan holiday (and therefore, somehow, utterly godless); some people have an understandable aversion to the commercialism of the season, which taints their enjoyment in the whole thing; and other people seem to relish cultivating a Scrooge-y, Grinch-y Scrinchiness, simply for the sake of being contrary. But I am one of those people who just believes in Christmas spirit.

I don’t know exactly why. I’m usually a pretty suspicious, critical person; I spent Thanksgiving weekend in equal parts watching football and analyzing misogyny in football TV commercials. But I am 100% bought into Christmas time, Christmas cookies, Christmas gifts, tinsel, lights, and praying for snow. 

This isn’t because I am immune to the frustrating parts of the season. I’m not as busy as some  - no parties to host, no kids in pageants, no church services to organize like my seminary pastor-friends. Further, I also happen to like my family and don’t mind driving long distances. Yet, December for me is and always will be fraught with finals frenzy, and as a student I always pick up extra work hours in order to afford a few gifts. I’m not just making paper snowflakes and singing Alvin and the Chipmunks all month.

Image by Susan Smith

So what do I mean by “Christmas spirit”? If there’s something beyond the shopping and rushing and Pinteresting, something warm and human and divine – what is that something supposed to be?

I certainly can’t say there’s anything objectively special about December 25th, unless it’s that, growing up in Georgia, praying for snow teaches you stubborn hope for things as distant and unlikely as the Advent of the Messiah. Maybe the dark of winter is, after all, a good time for an unlikely-bright celebration of such an unlooked-for king. And yes, that story itself has much to do with what I love about Christmas, but you’ll forgive me if I am a bit more enchanted by the donkeys and magic stars and cousins leaping in wombs than by the incarnation. I’m a theology student and “incarnation” is the only word any of us knows anymore. 

My Christmas just isn’t going to be hyper-seriously-spiritual this year; after term papers on theological concepts and obligations of all kinds, I’m gonna need down-to-earth sugar sprinkles and a Linus-reciting-Luke level of heady theological engagement.

Image by gravity_grave

Maybe “Christmas spirit” just means to me that I love seeing everyone try just a bit harder, approach the world with a little more openness and love. Just because we can – and, when we remember, because God is with us – we try to make a day more special for each other. We remember to surround ourselves with music and to feed each other real food. We let Christ’s birth into humanity call us back to our own humanity. If we’re lucky, we even get to take actual time off work to actually be with our families. 

The world needs more un-ironic glitter glue. As long as my Christmas still has those moments beyond the money-spending, pine-needle-sweeping, and Scotch tape emergencies, I’ll still believe in the magic of the whole thing.

Lyndsey lives in Boston, MA where she is pursuing her Master's in Theological Studies at Boston University. She enjoys Community, Mad Men and Beauty and the Beast and her spirit animal is a sloth. She would like to know if this is some kind of interactive theater art piece. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  
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On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 25 - Sad Is Just Happy For Deep People

by Ben Howard

Ben, Sebastian, Jesse and Ryan talk about the manufactured happiness of churches from the "Too Blessed to be stressed" mindset to having all songs played in a major key. We talk about why Ben has a hard time being happy on Ash Wednesday, the importance of liturgical traditions, and how Scrubs can teach us about balancing joy and pain. Also, Jesse and Ben trade Anne of Green Gables and Doctor Who references to explain their points as true nerds are wont to do. Join in and enjoy as we talk about how the church can be both happy and sad as it attempts to embrace the reality of everyday life.

You can download the podcast by clicking here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by searching "On Pop Theology" in the iTunes music store. If you download the show through iTunes, please be so kind as to rate and review us. We want your feedback and it helps the show to grow.

Also, remember to "Like" On Pop Theology on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @OnPopTheology for all the updates, posts, and links throughout the week.

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Peace,
Ben

If you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to say hi, you can contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.

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• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 24 - An Interview w/ Christian Piatt
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God Doesn't Want You To Be Happy: Hemlock Grove and Dysfunctional Christianity

by Charity Erickson 

Eli Roth’s Netflix series Hemlock Grove impressed me with its ambitious scope. It is a pretty straightforward murder-mystery—it follows the investigation into a series of grizzly killings in small-town Pennsylvania. Over time, it becomes an homage to the horror genre (replete with punishing attitudes toward female sexuality, unfortunately), overflowing with allusions to classic literature and film. Ubiquitous symbolism invokes Freud, Lao Tzu, mythic themes, and “the hero’s journey.” There’s also a really sweet vampire-werewolf bromance.

The structure is recursive—there are points of plot and dialogue that do not make sense until you go back after watching the season in its entirety.  Because of this, I almost gave up on the show after the first two episodes; I kept feeling like I must have missed something. I don’t know if this structural risk makes the series more entertaining or more frustrating, but it certainly makes it fun fodder for English-major nerdery.

For our purposes, the most interesting character on the show is Dr. Clementine Chasseur, (Battlestar Galactica’s Kandyse McClure.) From the standpoint of nerdery, I can’t help but wonder if “Chasseur” isn’t a wink at Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of structural linguistics and semiotics.

And from the standpoint of pop culture and theology, the character proves just as fascinating: Chasseur is an alcoholic ex-Marine who comes to investigate the murders as part of a mysterious monster-hunting order of the Catholic Church. She wears an icon around her neck of St. Jude, “the patron saint of lost causes.” She is a lesbian, repressed, and filled with self-doubt. And she is fond of repeating this desperately sad phrase with vigorous conviction: “God doesn’t want you to be happy. He wants you be strong.”

Every time this line makes an appearance in the series, I cringe at the pain behind it; I have wrestled with this way of seeing God. There was a time when I, too, struggled to make sense of the pervasive, overwhelming unhappiness that weighed on me despite scripture’s characterization of joy as a “fruit of the Spirit,” something that was supposed to naturally develop within a truly Spirit-filled Christian.

And since I believed that God controlled all extant circumstances in the universe, and that the Bible was merely language with no art, I began to believe that it was not within God’s will for me to be happy, and that joy must be something other than what I’d always thought it to be. (I was depressed, actually, and an addict, too; I didn’t know it though. My theology didn’t allow for a good Christian to be afflicted in such a way.)

But this theology that says “God doesn’t want you to be happy” is not really theology at all. It is a coping mechanism. For the dysfunctional Christian without access to more helpful theology, this way of seeing God gives him a sense of control by making his pain understandable, while also giving him permission to wallow in the familiar, “safe” space of his sickness. Instead of seeking rest and grace, he tries to power through, to be “strong.” But this only adds to his burdens. And when he teaches those around him that it is not for the Christian to grasp at happiness, he creates for himself a sick, joyless faith family that confirms his view of God.

Not that Hemlock Grove is saying this in any explicit way. Even after my second time through the series, I can’t quite put together exactly what the show is trying to say through the post-modern narrative play, literary content and institutional critique. Maybe it’s saying something about the way we use scripts—the sayings and stories that we use to conceptualize our reality—and how they can keep us in sickness and suffering, or perhaps worst of all, how they can keep us scared.

Or maybe it’s just a scattered, sophomoric experiment in narrative form from those who have read just enough Derrida to be dangerous. 

Yet, even if the writers had no exhaustive plan to connect all the pieces of the story in a fully-comprehensible way, there is something here in the world they created, something that draws the viewer into this world of monsters, as it promises some kind of special insight into the human psyche. It sends the mind searching down dreamy, almost-familiar corridors that may lead either to terrors or to nothingness—which, I suppose, is a variety of terror. In any case, it is worth it to explore, and even to enjoy this world as much as possible, knowing that when the final credits roll, the horrors are over.

Charity Erickson and her husband Lance live and work together in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Check out her blog for more of her writing and follow her on Twitter @CharityJill.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
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I'm Too Cool to Like Happy Things

by Ben Howard


I really want to be cool. That's about as honest and direct a statement as I can make. I'm not quite a hipster, but I'm definitely hipster-adjacent. I listen to NPR, I own a fedora, I listen to indie folk music and think Mumford and Sons may have been inspired by God. I mean, I watch Community and if you believe NBC, that show is watched by like five people on a weekly basis. I am part of the one percent!

Sometimes though, that whole "trying to be cool" thing chafes a little bit. It's constricting. You are allowed to enjoy anything, but some of those things you are only allowed to enjoy ironically. But I don't really like enjoying things ironically, I like enjoying them genuinely. It's just more fun if you actually like the things you like.

For instance, this weekend I went to see the new movie Pitch Perfect. It's pretty clear to any outside observer that this movie was made to take advantage of the "let's put on a show" trend that Glee seems to have popularized recently. It's about dueling acapella groups from a fictional college competing for the national title in acapella singing and dancing. That's a pretty bizarre premise. If somebody had mentioned saving the rec center you could have called it Step Up 4: Sing It Out.

Here's the thing: I loved the movie! The songs were excellent, the characters were fun, the story moved, the writing was funny and snarky and playful. This movie knew what it was and didn't take itself too seriously. It wasn't mocking the genre or acting like it was only ironically connected to shows like Glee, it was just having so much fun being exactly what it was.

It's important to note that authenticity and being genuine are things that come from happiness as much as they come from angst and pain. My disposition and personality make me crave for things that have authenticity, maybe its inherent and maybe its part of my hipster-proximity. One flaw in this craving is that I find things that are dark or broken or flawed to be more authentic than things that are happy or bubbly or joyful. There's a special place in my heart for songs in a minor key and romantic comedies with bittersweet endings. I'm the guy who loves the movie Friday Night Lights because the team loses the big game.

I think a lot of churches may have this blind spot too. In fact, I think churches are deeply melodramatic at heart. If you really think about it, most churches mirror the plot of a soap opera. We celebrate weddings and births. We encounter death constantly, both in funerals and the crucifixion. There are often tears and life-changing moments of personal insight. There's even a sizable amount of backstabbing and political intrigue.

But when it comes to joy? To excitement and happiness? It comes across forced and out of place. Church is for propriety and solemnity, not fun and enjoyment.

Why is that? Why can't the joy and excitement of the resurrection inspire a church-wide dance party? Why would that seem out of place? Is the church too cool to be authentically deeply happy? Is it too concerned with what it looks like to just have fun being what it is?

The church is like the ragamuffin band of wannabe acapella singers in Pitch Perfect. Black and white, cool and uncool, traditional and iconoclastic, fat and skinny, weird and normal, yet somehow when we embrace those differences and just start to accept them and have some fun being who we are there's a chance for beautiful, transcendent harmony.

Peace,
Ben

When he isn't writing about Pitch Perfect, Ben is listening to the soundtrack. Yes, he bought the soundtrack. It's really, really catchy. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard87 [at] gmail.com.

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The Muppets, Moonrise Kingdom, and Being Happy

by Ben Howard

It’s difficult for me to be authentically happy.  Well, let me rephrase that, it’s hard for me to communicate authentic happiness.  I can convey sadness, angst, fear, pain, anger, but when I try and talk about happiness it feels like I’ve left something out.  It’s like everything I say comes out like it’s part of a happiness MadLib and I’m just feeling in the blanks. 

I am happy about (noun),  I really like (same noun) ever since (date) when I first (verb) it with (name).  I’m so excited (number of exclamation points). 

I experience these little moments of transcendent happiness all the time, but it’s become frustrating that I can’t share them on the same level.  I can’t communicate the beauty of a certain delicate guitar chord combined with the sun coming through this particular window on that one random day in February, but that moment was so beautiful, so full of joy, that I deeply, deeply wish I could.

All the words feel cliché.  Maybe this is because our culture uses the happy words too much, without making sure that they carry the appropriate weight.  Maybe it’s just because beauty, real beauty overwhelms us.  Maybe real happiness can only be captured by the experience of the event.

Two movies that I’ve seen in the last year made me feel this way.  Just happy.  Simple, delicate, profound.  The first one is The Muppets with Jason Segel that came out last Thanksgiving.  It’s not a perfect movie.  It’s kind of ridiculous and the plot is mildly absurd, but it’s filled with so much heart and love and passion, that I can’t help but smile whenever someone mentions it, let alone when I’m actually watching the movie itself.  I want everyone to feel the way I feel when that movie is showing.  Peaceful, with a big goofy grin on my face.

The second is Wes Anderson’s new film Moonrise Kingdom which I just saw last weekend.  Like all Wes Anderson movies, it’s quirky in every way, tone, characters, look, everything.  At it’s heart, the movie is a love story between two off-beat, misunderstood 12 year old’s who run away together.  That love story was so precious, so simple; the kind of thing that makes you nostalgic for things you never experienced and that never actually existed.

There’s a lot of pain in our world.  Often I think that the darker and more painful the event, the more real and authentic it is, but this can’t possibly be true.  It may be easier to access the darkness, it may be more pervasive in our day to day, but the joy is just as real as the pain.  It does not eliminate pain, but it has, it does, it will transcend it.  Even if I can't explain why.

Peace,

Ben

You can contact me on Twitter @BenHoward87, leave a comment or email me.  Have a nice day!