Angels Are Not Cute and Fluffy

I was in sixth grade, and it was one of those banner years where our children’s choir got to take up the whole Sunday service with a musical that we started practicing in September.

And after tryouts, I was not happy with the role I got, even though it was one of the leads. “I didn’t want to be the angel,” I remember muttering in the car after we got our parts handed out.

"I am super cute, and I know it." (I 100% did not look like this.)

In this particular production, the angel’s name was Chrissy, and she was a sighing, ditzy girl who giggled a lot and did absolutely nothing to contribute to solving the mystery of the play except make obvious statements and sing a solo of “What Child Is This?”

Part of my dislike of my part was the aforementioned lack of depth in the character. Part of it was because, growing rapidly toward a gawky twelve, I was becoming aware that girls with huge glasses and bowl cuts weren’t supposed to get the part of the pretty, popular angel. I was told I might even—gasp!—have to paint my nails for the performance.

“Angels weren’t girls, anyway,” I continued. “I would be the sissiest angel ever.”

"Hey, if you wanted to, you could maybe look over there at the star. Please."

By the time I got to high school, my glasses were gone, my hair longer, and my sense of exegetical certainty even more firmly ingrained. I was writing the dramas for our youth group and hadn’t lost that angels-aren’t-sissy chip on my shoulder. I insisted on making all angels in my Christmas skits male. Because they basically all were in the Bible. (The guys in the youth group didn’t all appreciate this, since angel costumes are not usually designed with males in mind.)

King John's Christmas

(This week, I decided to post one of the children's plays I wrote for Plays magazine but couldn't sell because the poem it quotes won't be in the public domain for eleven years. So enjoy!)

King John’s Christmas

by Amy Green

Adapted from the poem by A. A. Milne

Cast

Minstrel

Peasant

Freddy—servant boy

Emma—servant girl

Housekeeper

King John—a selfish ruler

Lord Hastings

Lady Hastings

Young John

Setting: King John’s office. There is a desk at center, with stacks of papers and several Christmas cards propped up on the edge.

At Rise: Minstrel, carrying a guitar or other stringed instrument, stands down right. Housekeeper and Freddy stand at far left. Emma is scrubbing the floor near center stage.

MINSTREL: Well, it’s Christmastime again. And that reminds me of a story from my days playing music in the royal court of old King John. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

FREDDY: Heard of him! He’s a regular slavedriver, that one.

HOUSEKEEPER: Only thing stiffer than him are his dress shirts—after he has me iron them a dozen times each.

FREDDY: Nothing but work, work, work, every day of the year. (He and HOUSEKEEPER exit left.)

EMMA: Even on Christmas.

MINSTREL: That’s right. Even on Christmas. He’s an interesting man, that King John.

(Strumming guitar)     King John was not a good man–
                                    He had his little ways.
                                    And sometimes no one spoke to him
                                    For days and days and days.

The White Witch's Holiday Gift Guide

Today it snowed in Minneapolis. This, to anyone who knows approximately one fact about Minnesota, is not surprising and doesn’t deserve an announcement. But it was the first significant snow, a Christmas season snow, the kind that does more than soak your socks and coat the roads with slush.

It takes you to Narnia.

Or, at least, it did for me. But then, I’m in Narnia probably half of the time anyway. Even just on this blog, I’ve written about Edmund and Star Wars Mafia, Cair Paravel and heaven, Susan and death, and always winter, never Christmas.

Nearly every time I play hide-and-seek or push aside coats in a closet, I feel around for pine needles. I’m almost ashamed about how excited I got the day in C.S. Lewis class (yes, it’s a class) when we ate Turkish Delight. And one year, when I had to pick up two boxes from the post office and it was snowing, I brought an umbrella along and paused under a lamppost for a while, hoping that someone would come by, recognize the allusion, and be suitably impressed. No one did. It was quite disappointing.

But tonight I was curled up in my armchair, looking out at the snow, and I remembered Father Christmas.

It’s kind of a random little incident in the middle of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Beavers and the Pevensies (sans Edmund) are on the run from the White Witch, when all of a sudden they hear jingle bells. But the sleigh doesn’t belong to the dreaded Ice Queen, but to Father Christmas himself!

Sentimentality-O-Meter

Seen a Hallmark holiday special yet? Turned on the radio to hear a Christmas song intended to pull on your heartstrings? Seen the covers of Christian novellas with titles like “Little Julie’s Gift” or “A Christmas Miracle” or “Members of a Small, Steepled Church, Including a Disillusioned Pastor, a Rebellious Teenager, and a Busy Mom With Wrong Priorities, Come Together to Bring Christmas to an Injured Child Whose Father is in Prison”?

Writers out there, take note: sentimental sells during the holiday season. In case you need a guide on how to capitalize on this, here’s a handy scorecard to see how sappy you can possibly make a piece of Christmas entertainment.

Does it feature a child?: If yes, +10. If no, it’s not a sappy Christmas movie/song/book. Try again.

            Does this child believe in Santa or God despite the cynicism of adults around him/her?              +25 (+10 bonus if this change only comes at the end of the movie/song/book)

                        If you flinched at the association of Santa and God above, good for you. No                         points, though.

            Has this child recently lost a parent, or is this child critically ill? +25

            Does this child die? +200

Does someone cry? (Tears of sadness: +10, Tears of happiness: +20, Tears of happiness that could be mistaken as tears of sadness or vice versa: +50)

Is there a gift that expresses profound symbolism? +20

Is there a scene/line where unexpected snow features significantly? +10

            Do the characters look up at the snow with expressions of joy and wonder? +5 per person

            Does someone express a disbelieving sentiment such as “Well I’ll be”? +10 per comment

Does the line “Merry Christmas” or some form of it end a critical scene? +10

Is one of the characters opposed to Christmas? If so…

            Is this character on a personal quest to cancel or get rid of some feature of the holiday (or             the entire holiday)? +10

            Is this character an embittered older person who will probably have a change of heart? +30

Are there any cute pets? +10 per cat, dog, bunny, reindeer, monkey, or baby hedgehog (no points for snakes or lizards)

Are angels referenced or pictured? +15 if said angel is robed and carrying a harp. -100 if it has six wings, carries a sword, and/or is covered with eyes.

Quick Checklist

+5 for any of the following:

Airport scene?

Mention of peace on earth?

Slow motion?

Word “miracle” used?

Someone looks up and says, “Thanks”?

Bells (church or jingle)?

Sleigh ride?

Boys’ choir singing?

The First Noel?

Recently, I played one of those games where it gives you the name of a Christmas song or carol in fancy vocabulary so you have to guess what it is. The examples ranged from “A singular yuletide yearning for a pair of anterior incisors” (“All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”) to “Our company consists of a monarchial trio” (“We Three Kings) to “A query concerning the infant presently before us” (“What Child Is This?”)

It was fun trying to figure out the different titles, and after a few, I got pretty good at it. It was when I got to “Proclaim tidings of jubilation from the summit of a rocky terrain,” otherwise known as “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” that I realized something: the “it” in the title is talking about sharing the gospel with people, especially the good news of Jesus’ birth.

Who knew, right?

Maybe all of you knew that. Probably. Because it’s right there in the song. But the “Name That Carol” game reminded me of something really interesting: I never really listen to the words of the songs I sing at this time of year.

There’s something nice, comfortable, and familiar about Christmas carols. You can let your eyes wander to the starry background of the screen during worship at church, not even glancing at the words, and still sing them on auto-pilot. The memorized lines are tucked away somewhere deep inside us, and we bring them out like treasures from the attic once a year, dusting them off and displaying them proudly.

Christmas Burnout

Eight Christmas parties in one week.

On the first Sunday of December during my sophomore year, this sounded like the most exciting schedule ever. I was involved in a half-dozen groups and organizations, all of which decided that they needed to distribute frosted cookies at various events to properly celebrate the season. It was going to be so much fun!

By Wednesday, I was a little sleep-deprived, but hey, Christmas only comes once a year, right?

By Friday, I was starting to get sick, dragging through my classes with annoying Christmas songs stuck in my head. I wrote in my journal, “To survive this weekend, I’m going to need lots of prayer, Nyquil and Christmas fudge.”

By Sunday, I skipped my last party and almost fell into a candy-cane induced coma.

Marketing the Christmas Spirit

Every year, several of the residence halls at my college decorate their suites and hallways according to a certain theme, usually pretty elaborately. And every year, my brilliant theme idea gets rejected: A Cynical Christmas.

In the first suite, we would have a shopping mall filled with flashy, neon advertisements and cranky people fighting over the last Furby (heaven help us all that this trend has returned). In the second room, we would have a war-torn ghetto with a waif-like freshman huddled under old newspapers with headlines of death and destruction on them. Happy 50s Christmas music would be playing ironically in the background. Then we’d have a hospital wing—complete with holiday Jell-o—and finally, a nursing home where everyone would forget what they were supposed to be celebrating.

Fun, right?

Actually, I understand why most people wouldn’t enjoy this theme. Besides poking fun at the genuine suffering of others, it’s a bit too…cynical. Sometimes, though, that’s just how I relate to the world. Fortunately, I have two separate cynics inside of me, and sometimes when they duke it out on a particular issue, the idealist cynic wins.

Not sure how that works? Allow me to demonstrate.

Let’s take the topic of “Christmas spirit.” It’s in almost every holiday special, but sometimes it’s hard to define in real-life terms. Do people really become more joyful in December? Are they really more likely to say smile at strangers, drop money in the Salvation Army bucket, and compliment young moms on their adorable children like some sort of picture print by Currier and Ives? Do people really feel anything like peace on earth or goodwill to men when most of them think of Jesus as that plastic baby in a nativity scene?

The first cynic in me wants to say, “No.”

But I have a counter-cynic who argues with this first-reaction cynic and says, “Maybe.” The evidence? Not the touchy-feely stories on the news about someone adopting a kitten from the animal shelter on Christmas Eve or whatever. Not statistics (because even the counter-cynic knows that statistics can be completely made up). Not the frantic shopping rush that we pass off under the sneaky label of “generosity.”

The biggest proof, to me anyway, that people are less selfish at Christmastime is that marketers have to change their strategy in December. If you don’t believe me, watch the top ten Superbowl commercials. Then watch the top ten Christmas…sorry, I mean holiday commercials.

Sabbath Reflections: Coincidence? I Think Not!

You know those stories that span years and have two people's lives intersect in a strange, coincidental ways and sound like they should have an epic score behind them in their dramatic conclusions? This is one of those stories from my life that I wanted to share.

Dialogue is my favorite part of writing. This makes sense – I love talking, I love listening, I love eavesdropping on random strangers. And I love drama (inside the theatre, not anywhere else).

These are a few of the reasons that I wrote a lot of scripts in high school, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Back then, my reasoning went something like this: some of the skits we’re doing for youth group (taken from badly-designed freebie websites) are terrible. Even I could do better than that.

So I did. My sophomore year in high school, I wrote a flurry of scripts for our youth group to perform at different events. It was a lot of fun.

But then, just like I usually do when I start a new project, I got burnt out. I didn’t feel “in the mood” to write any more scripts. So, spring of my junior year, I just stopped.

A few months later, I went to the Kids’ Action Club talent show. (That’s what our church calls our children’s ministry. Although the name might lead you to think so, it is not, in fact, a league of young spies, which is a little disappointing.) The talent show was an annual event, crammed with plunked-out piano solos and badly off-key singing and proud parents who didn’t care.

Christmas Carol Parodies

It’s finals week, everyone! To perpetuate the illusion that I’m studying for hours upon end, I’m pulling today’s blog post out of the archives. Here are some Christmas carol parodies I wrote a few years ago. Enjoy!

Christmas Specials

To the tune of: “Jingle Bells.”

Flipping channels on,

My new flat-screen T.V.

Re-runs make me yawn,

Nothing new to see.

Rudolph and his show,

You’ve watched since you were five,

And, come on, don’t we always know,

That Frosty will survive?

Oh, Christmas Town, Charlie Brown,

Clarence gets his wings,

Home Alone takes robbers down,

And Irving Berlin sings,

Grinch relents, Scrooge repents,

Bad guys always lose.

While each viewer cries laments,

Like, “I’d rather watch the news.”

Write Christmas Tree Characters

First snowmen, now Christmas trees. What is it with me and extended metaphors at this time of year?

Something in the eggnog, I guess. Oh well. Here it goes. Your fictional characters should be like the following kinds of Christmas tree:

A Living Christmas Tree

This has nothing to do with whether you cut your tree in a lot or pulled it out of a deteriorating cardboard box (because my tree at home is the latter). What I consider “alive” has a lot to do with the decorations on the tree. Some trees have nice strings of lights, bulbs carefully arranged and within a narrow color scheme, and empty boxes wrapped in coordinating paper. Others are a hodge-podge explosion of colorful holiday miscellany (always wanted to use that word). Each ornament, from the “Baby’s First Christmas” with adorable six-month-old Amy grinning out of it, to the tattered handprint Rudolph made in Sunday School, to the bookworm inside a gnawed-out apple, has a story.

In the same way, characters should be more than empty decorations, placed in the scene to look good. They represent a lifetime of stories. The readers should feel like they happened upon a chapter in the middle of the character’s life, but that it goes on before and after the novel or short story begins. This might mean including some details about your character that don’t quite fit a stereotype. There might be some odds and ends, some quirks, even some things that seem ugly. But that’s what makes the characters seem real and gives them meaning.

Always Winter, Never Christmas

One of the worst realities I can think of is the setting of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: always winter, but never Christmas.

When I first read the book as an eight-year-old, I thought immediately about the fact that Mr. Tumnus and the beavers never had presents or carols or a Christmas trees with those bulbs that make your nose look big when you hold them up to your face.

But the Narnians needed more than the outward trappings of the holidays. They were longing for things that they could hardly remember, but that they somehow knew were missing: hope, joy, and peace.

Like Narnia, our world was once frozen in always winter, never Christmas. But then, two things happened.

Writing and Building Snowmen

I used to have a really funny intro for this post.

Yep. It was all about how my ulterior motive for writing this was that I wanted it to snow. I also explained the magical charm needed to bend weather to your whims around Christmastime.

But then yesterday it snowed. So there went my intro. On the positive side, the snow put me in the mood for the actual topic of this post: how writing fiction is exactly like building a snowman.

Okay, maybe not exactly. But there are similarities. If you’re skeptical about associating snowman building and good writing, I have three words for you: Calvin and Hobbes.

Sabbath Reflections: Writing in a Minor Key

Thanksgiving is over. This means I can officially write blog posts about Christmas.

If you weren’t aware of this deadline, it’s probably because you are either surrounded by happy-go-lucky elves who started playing carols after Labor Day or Grinches who might work up a tiny scrap of holiday cheer by Christmas Eve. Maybe.

However, let me assure any doubters out there that this is a legitimate, if somewhat arbitrary measurement. So here we go.

One of my favorite Christmas carols is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” You know why?

Because it’s in a minor key.