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Have Christmas Everywhere All Year

Have Christmas Everywhere All Year

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We’re still celebrating the 12 days of Christmas (until Epiphany) and I’ll confess Advent/Christmas is my favorite season in the Church. Yes, Easter is when the full saving power of God comes to us in Christ who dies for us and we are given the Eucharist at the last supper. Christmas, however, is when God shows us exactly how He is used to working in the world. That is a source of real hope for the whole of our lives. Especially when everything looks like it has gone wrong and there is little hope.

The coming of Jesus the messiah is foretold for hundreds of years by the prophets and foreshadowing of the Old Testament. It’s not hard to understand people were expecting another Moses or David who overthrew enemy armies and freed them from slavery – giving them a promised land to live on and freeing them from slavery to other nations.

Instead Jesus came to free us in a very different and much better way. Jesus didn’t come into the world as the kind of conqueror or revolutionary activist that anyone expected. We see people clamoring for, and even starting, revolts against the Roman occupation. Even Jesus own disciples keep asking when Jesus will overthrow the Romans (Acts 1:6-7). But Jesus again and again points them back to the true nature of freedom.

Instead, He established a new kingdom – not based on land or borders, but a promised land of freedom in our hearts where the true king, Jesus, would dwell every day with you. It would be a profound intimacy in which the full presence of God’s three persons will dwell in us, love us, and show us how to love others in our own hearts. That love and real living in Truth in our very being frees us from the futile things that actually enslave us and destroy our world: greed, hatred, unforgiveness, hurt, violence, and hopelessness.

But just like the earliest disciples, we can absolutely miss Jesus’ arrival if we aren’t aware of how God likes to comes into our lives.

When God, who created the entire universe and all of us, wants to send a savior to us – he doesn’t appear magically and just wipe away our problems like a lottery ticket. Instead, he decides to come in full human form – starting as a single cell embryo in his mother’s womb, being carried through a normal pregnancy, and born just like us. He enters creation as it is – and not in a palace or by magically changing how things are. This in itself is a powerful message of just how much he loves us and all He has created.

He is born to an unwed mother – who’s betrothed fiance nearly abandons her when faced with an unexpected pregnancy he knew wasn’t his. Jesus is born on the road in a city Mary may never have been too. The whole reason for the trip was due to a census required by the occupying Roman military force.

There was no reservations at a hospital or hotel – He is born in a barn that was likely just an open-air covering next to an existing house or part of a cave. There were no doctors/midwives, no anesthesia, no preparation, no family or friends – just her and her husband in an animal barn that likely smelled and was filthy. This means He is easy to miss if we are looking in flashy presentations, in wealth, or in big signs or wonders.

Joseph was a blue-collar worker of humble means. In Greek, Joseph is described as a τέκτων – tekton – a craftsman or builder of stone/wood/etc. Joseph would likely be a construction worker or bricklayer of today. Certainly not a social media, Hollywood, or political star. When Jesus is brought to the temple his parents could only offer a pair of turtledoves/pigeons – which was what the poorest families offered. It means they could not even afford a whole lamb.

They quickly needed to flee to Egypt to escape the persecutions of Herod. They lived as political refugees in Egypt for years – likely struggling to make ends meet, faced prejudices, and likely had no friends or family to help raise their child. They likely didn’t even have a temple or place to worship and connect with other Jews.

When they returned, they settled in Nazareth in Galilee – an area considered to be the ‘hick’ area of Israel. People recognize the disciples as being from the area by the way they speak – probably much like people recognize Southern accents. When Jesus calls his first disciples, even Nathaniel scoffs at Nazareth as a nothing backwater (“Nathan′a-el said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see”. (John 1:46)).

All this is to say this is how God likes to answers our prayers and come into our lives. Jesus’ life was the meanest start with no power, no money, no status. Instead, He comes anonymously, quietly – in a barn full of stench and disarray.

And that’s often just what our lives are like when we need Him most.

We often fill our hearts with all kinds of similar things. We may be in an ugly structure of a life leaning against or built on professional pride or greed for money, houses, or power and positions at work. We are filled with the dirty straw and broken furniture of family members estranged by neglect or hurtful words/actions, marriages that lack love and charity, or ignoring the needy all around us, foreigners, or people we disagree with politically or in our workplace. We may even have the most base filth of ourselves as well: sins of adultery, substance abuse, pornography, and passions we are slaves too.

But this is just the place that Jesus is used to coming into. If he can come into the world in a barn of the meanest sort, He is showing us He will come into our lives – no matter what is going on.

Evil (pride, ego, and guilt) wants you to be embarrassed and hide these things from Him or even let others tell you that these things are all fine (when we know in our hearts they are not). They want to tell Him there is no room in your inn and push Him down the road. But Jesus is ready to be born not just at an inn, but in the worst, most filthy barns of our lives. Christmas is celebrated in the shortest, darkest days of winter because He wants to come exactly when we need Him in our hearts the most.

It is sometimes hard to invite Jesus into these nasty and hurt corners of our life. Especially during the holidays with family. Sometimes we don’t feel worthy or feel too broken to want to accept His presence and love. Sometimes we’re unable to get things out of our lives like addictions – which might need both God and medical help. As creations of spirit and physical body – sometimes we need care for both at the same time.

It might also be because we don’t want to give up our pain or hurts. Ironically, we sometimes like to hold onto those things that are killing us. Hate is often more fun to hold onto than the work of relationships. Sometimes we avoid it out of fear of what our lives would look like if we started living freely without that pain. Others are simply not interested in reconciliation and are happy to hurt or ignore others.

Many today think they’re doing just fine on their own and don’t need Jesus – despite the growing scientific proof about the increasing emptiness and hopelessness we feel.

But it’s not just the things in our hearts – these push outwards into our lives. Maybe we recognize the work we’re doing is immoral or hurting people. Is Jesus a part of our work day in both the business decisions and how coworkers are treated? Perhaps we’re in a relationship we should not be in for our state in life, or is based on using someone to get what we want. Have we invited Jesus into our sexual lives fully?

Do we invite Christ to come into our hearts all day when making work choices or deciding how to respond to others? Do we invite Jesus to help us when faced with a tough choice – or what to say when someone cuts you off in traffic?

All of these things are an opportunity for Christmas – to invite Jesus into your world. No matter how unsightly it is. Trust me – as he showed with his own birth – He is used to it. It is an excellent challenge to think of something you are struggling with or an old hurt – and purposefully invite Jesus to come into that part. His coming will likely not be a huge, magical fix- but a quiet arrival that slowly changes our world. If we stay committed to it.

Christ is used to coming into the meanest and most difficult parts of our lives and world. Invite Him into just one new area of yours – and experience Christmas all year.

Mt Zao snow monsters

Mt Zao snow monsters

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The Mount Zao Snow Monsters are not real snow monsters. They are an unusual natural phenomenon called juhyo which occurs on Mount Zao in Japan from late December to March. Maries’ Fir trees are evergreen conifer trees indigenous to the central-northern mountain regions of Honshu. They endure blazing summer heat and then bitter winters. Each winter Siberian winds travel across the North Japan Sea and batter the mountain with 6-9 feet of snow which glazes the fir trees with freezing condensation to create these strange creations.

They become a tourist attraction both day via cable car and when illuminated at night.

You are what you eat

You are what you eat

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Patrick Walsh talks about interesting hidden risks in LLM’s and RAG workflows. He demonstrates how to extract sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information and social security numbers these systems were trained on, with real-world attacks.

Replacing your Subaru mid 2010’s Crosstrek Headlights

Replacing your Subaru mid 2010’s Crosstrek Headlights

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Once your car gets about 10 years old, one of the most annoying things is that headlights dim and yellow. This is due to a number of reasons – but primarily due to the degradation of the UV coating. You can buff it off, but it often quickly returns and you’re stuck with an annoying chore almost every year.

Another option is to buy replacement headlights. In the old days, you simply unscrewed the old bulbs and put in the new ones. Now you need to remove the assemblies – which often involves removing the bumper and surrounding shrouds – as is the case with mid 2010 Subarus.

The Crosstrek/Impreza’s in the 2015 era were actually not that bad to replace. TRQ does a great job showing you how to do the job yourself – including how to re-aim the headlights. It’s a great video.

Tool for measuring AI enhanced GPU image quality

Tool for measuring AI enhanced GPU image quality

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Engineers at Intel released an open-source tool that tries to quantify the issues from increasing amounts of upscalers, frame generators, and AI rendering techniques. Ironically, the tool itself is an AI trained on large datasets. Their paper about the methodology is located here.

CGVQM is a video quality metric that predicts perceptual differences between pairs of videos.
Like PSNR and SSIM, it compares a ground-truth reference to a distorted version (e.g. blurry, noisy, aliased).

What sets CGVQM apart is that it is the first metric calibrated for distortions from advanced rendering techniques, accounting for both spatial and temporal artifacts.

CGVQM is available for free on github and uses PyTorch optimized for CUDA GPUs though it does work on CPUs.

Other links:

Christmas in the 1980’s

Christmas in the 1980’s

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I love the movie A Christmas Story. It was one man’s reflection on the traditions and experiences of being a kid at Christmas time in the 50’s. They say that nostalgia runs in waves every 20 years. I think another round comes when you hit 40 years.

I ran across this video of actual 1970’s Christmas music that was played in K-mart stores (I wrote about Mark Davis and his collection of retail store music before).

This music hit me like a truck. I remember being a sub-10 year old kid and being taken to a K-mart just like this around Christmas in the Midwest. I remember buying my first Stomper there, getting clothes, shoes, and school supplies before each school year.

But one of the biggest feelings I had was sadness as to something lost – and a warning. The founder, S.S. Kresge was an incredibly hard worker and a penny-pincher that wore cheap suits until they fell apart and put paper in his shoes when the soles wore thin. At the age of 34 in 1899, he opened a chain of 5 and 10 cent stores. He soon became the second largest retailer in the country. By1924 he was worth equivalent of $3.8 billion. By the 1950’s he had 694 stores. In 1962, he saw retail changing and innovated tons of new ideas with K-mart – like making big stores that carried just about everything one needed in one stop. They also innovated a food court, shopping carts that encouraged browsing and shopping, and being located in suburbs with plenty of free parking that wasn’t available in downtown stores.

And that’s what is fascinating and sad. By the late 80’s, the store started to fall to Walmart that focused on even bigger selection at even lower prices, and Target that focused on higher quality goods. K-mart was left in a strange middle ground and floundered as poor leadership couldn’t figure out their brand message.

It’s the story of a man that worked incredibly hard, pinched every penny, and put in untold hours. Yet, the company he founded in 1962 and drove to the 2nd biggest retailer barely lasted 43 years.

It’s a reminder that everything is passing. No matter what you built, how successful you are, how much power and money you accumulate, it all goes to someone else. And based on how many people under 20 I asked if they even heard of K-mart, how quickly a billionaire (equivalent) and his company is forgotten.

It also reminded me of how important I thought having the new lunch box, new school clothes, new shoes, and the toys was to me, but how unimportant those things are now. Instead, what I really remember and valued are the memories of my family and time we spent shopping together.

It made me think of this section from Introduction to the Devout Life – Fifth Meditation – On Death – Part I, Chapter 13 by St Francis De Sales:

Consider that then the world is at end as far as you are concerned, there will be no more of it for you, it will be altogether overthrown for you, since all pleasures, vanities, worldly joys, empty delights will be as a mere fantastic vision to you. Woe is me, for what mere trifles and unrealities I have ventured to offend my God? Then you will see that what we preferred to Him was nought. But, on the other hand, all devotion and good works will then seem so precious and so sweet –Why did I not tread that pleasant path? Then what you thought to be little sins will look like huge mountains, and your devotion will seem but a very little thing.

Consider how the survivors will hasten to put that body away, and hide it beneath the earth–and then the world will scarce give you another thought, or remember you, any more than you have done to those already gone. “God rest his soul!” men will say, and that is all. O death, how pitiless, how hard thou art!