{"id":6086,"date":"2009-09-28T13:54:45","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T18:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/2009\/09\/28\/mugs-the-new-fruitcake\/"},"modified":"2009-09-28T13:54:45","modified_gmt":"2009-09-28T18:54:45","slug":"mugs-the-new-fruitcake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2009\/09\/28\/mugs-the-new-fruitcake\/","title":{"rendered":"Mugs: The New Fruitcake?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>


<\/b>\"Fruitcake.jpg\"<\/span>When I was a kid, my great aunt came every Christmas, and one gift she always gave us was fruitcake. That fruitcake, even when I muster up my fondest of moments, was dry, tasteless, and \u2014 well, awful. In those days, fruitcake, for some unforgivable reason, had become the default gift. A default gift is the one you give when you can\u2019t think of anything to give someone.<\/p>\n

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What is your default gift?
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Today\u2019s fruitcake, as least in my experience, is the gift of a coffee mug. Now don\u2019t get me wrong; I like coffee aplenty. And I\u2019m not ungrateful and I don\u2019t toss these things away \u2014 I like all the mugs I\u2019ve got.<\/div>\n
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But mugs are piling up in my office. I use exactly one at a time; I wash the mug out once a month (or whenever Kris gets to my office). I could switch mugs daily, but that would mean cleaning the mugs daily, and that\u2019s not really a good idea. I never drink from more than one mug. Never have. The one I\u2019m using now is a big ol\u2019 mug with big letters: Atlanta. The thing\u2019s indestructible. I can see using it until I retire.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
To be sure, sometimes I make a cup of coffee for someone else in my coffee, but in my 15 years of teaching at North Park University, I\u2019ve never made more than three cups of coffee. At the max, I need three mugs \u2014 and we can add one more just in case one breaks.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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But I\u2019ve got 15 or so mugs sitting on a shelf, collecting dust and singing songs of loneliness. What am I to do? I\u2019ve decided the best thing I can do is to inform folks that:<\/div>\n
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Mugs, like fruitcake, need to be replaced by something else as the default gift!<\/b><\/div>\n

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The best gift I\u2019ve ever received speaking is a leather bookmark. What makes that bookmark distinctive is that, because it\u2019s leather and the backside is a bit rough, it\u2019s tacky and it never falls out of the book. The best gift ever.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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No matter how many leather bookmarks you get, you can always use another because there\u2019s always another book to read \u2014 and they don\u2019t take up so much shelf space.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, my great aunt came every Christmas, and one gift she always gave us was fruitcake. That fruitcake, even when I muster up my fondest of moments, was dry, tasteless, and \u2014 well, awful. In those days, fruitcake, for some unforgivable reason, had become the default gift. A default gift is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMugs: The New Fruitcake?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When I was a kid, my great aunt came every Christmas, and one gift she always gave us was fruitcake. 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