God vs. Man at Christmas – Keeping score of our cultural wins and losses

For our family vacation this Christmas we packed up the clan and loaded up the car with what seemed like all our belongings and headed south to Los Angeles for a week long excursion. (When you have a family full of girls you can’t help but look like the Clampetts when you finally get in the car.)

During the 8 hour drive from Sacramento to LA, a few of the radio talk shows I was able to find were discussing how Seattle’s airport had removed all of their Christmas trees in response to a complaint from a Rabbi. Man 1, God 0.

Once we got to LA, we started with a requisite trip to Disneyland. I suspected Disneyland would be overly politically correct about Christmas. While they certainly focused on the innocuous “Happy Holidays” message, they at least embraced Santa and his elves. Still, I’ll count the point for man. Man 2, God 0.

The next side trip found us killing time before seeing a movie at LA’s newest hot shopping spot, The Grove. Sitting in the midst of the faux cityscape was like being in the middle of a surreal anthropological experiment – something like a human petting zoo. Being in the heart of Beverly Hills, we were overwhelmed by the extreme wealth and the ‘augmentation’. Score at least 2 more points for man. Man 4, God 0.

And then the movie started. It began with King Herod ordering the death of all young boys in the town of Bethlehem to thwart the threat posed to his rule by the coming Messiah. (Shall we score one more point for man? Oh, why not – Man 5, God 0.)

But as we all know, Mary and Joseph made it out of Bethlehem and into Egypt with the King of Kings safely tucked away.

And here we have it, the story of Jesus’ birth on a 90 foot screen in the heart of Hollywood. No matter how many points man may score, God always wins.

** Rob Geyer