Lego Advent Calendar

All right, you happy culture warriors, keep your powder dry. Wait until Thanksgiving before you start kvetching about how Christmas is turning back into Saturnalia. Better yet, wait until you check out the Lego Advent calendar.

It’s fun, it’s liturgical year-friendly. One sells on Amazon for $38 — almost exactly what a carton of Pall Malls costs at the Pima reservation in Scottsdale.

On every day of the season, kids get to open a new window and claim a new block or figurine. On every day of Lent, the ingenious Christian parent could deepen her child’s understanding of sacrifice by locking one back up. (Yes, I know — I’m advertising my ignorance about kids and parenting: by Ash Wednesday, two-thirds of the pieces will have been lost or swallowed. Work with me. I’m just trying to get everyone’s creative juices flowing.)

What, Star Wars isn’t Christian enough? Fine, then. Write the Lego Group demanding they produce play sets that approximate any of the following scenes:

The Massacre of the Innocents

The Roman Circus

St. Jerome Writes a Letter in Which He Totally Bitches Somebody Out

Pope Adrian VI Downsizes the Papal Staff to the Jeers of the Roman Mob

Martin Luther Marries a Nun

The Décadent Poets Suddenly Get Religion

Chesterton Spaces out in a Railway Station

The Inklings Sit Around and Read Stuff

Flannery O’Connor Goes to the Hospital.

That ought to show ’em