I’m skipping Thanksgiving. Not skipping the food mind you…not even the worst stomach flu can separate me from the indulgence of the turkey feast. I’m skipping the pumpkins and pilgrims and all the rest of the fall colored decorations. I’m taking my cue from Wal Mart and going straight for Christmas. The green and red are going up a week early. The moratorium is lifted on Baby Jesus and Santa. They are allowed to make their move to center stage before the turkey is carved and its bones sent to the trash.

As a matter of fact, I’m liking this idea so well that I’m considering changing up my whole view of the fall holidays. Next year I’m considering bundling the fall holidays…a full merging of Halloween and Thanksgiving with the generic festive fall décor instead of the ghouls, goblins, and pilgrims. Then I can take the full week of Thanksgiving to get out the Christmas trim at my leisure.

Now sure, there are those among us who hate the encroachment of Christmas on all the other holidays, but I’m not among them. I love Christmas. It’s magic in a box of bulbs. Inner peace carried in the scent of pine. And after a hard year, saying good bye to my father and my grandmother, I’m ready for the joy of the holidays, for the assurance that our days on earth aren’t the end of  our existence, that the ones we say farewell to aren’t gone, but moved on, moved up  to a better place.

Sure, I know retailers bombard us with Christmas just to separate us from our money, but I say bring it. They can spin it, commercialize it, and start it in August and I’m game. There’s magic in that holiday. Magic that can’t be bought or sold because it was given to us as a gift.

Have a blessed holiday…no matter when you decide to begin.

I often wonder where all my time goes…sit down at the keyboard to check email, bam nearly an hour has passed. What gives? Does it really take me that long to delete all that spam? Not really. The biggest problem is the Trending Now column by my Yahoo inbox…that top 10 list of what everybody is googling at 9:32 am on this Monday morning. 

Each time I log on I’m unable to ignore that list…unable to ignore the curiosity that tiny snapshot of pop culture inspires.  And of course, I just can’t read it…I’ve got to consider each one like so:

Trending at 9:38 am….bbbrrrmmmm (that’s a drum roll)

Soooo, those are the Trends. I’ve checked them all out and suddenly it’s after 10:00. Instead of admitting I wasted my time, I called it research, wrote the blog and saved you the clicking time. :)  You may thank me in chocolate.

I plan to go to Heaven even though I say sh*t.

Let me explain.

Thirty years ago in my pre-teen youth I learned about the rapture. It was during a weekend youth retreat at my church. My friends and I watched a movie, a precursor to the “Left Behind” series with Kirk Cameron.  I remember the movie like it was yesterday…a little girl carrying home a stick of butter to her mom…boom, gone in the blink of an eye. The stick of butter lay melting on the hot summer sidewalk. Cut to the mom’s blender running unmanned in the bowl; mom was gone too. Left to suffer the Tribulation, or the last brutal days on earth, were all the non-believers. One was even a minster! GASP. 

Yeah, I had a few nightmares. But still, the movie motivated me. It made want to be ‘in’ with the ‘in crowd’ worse than a Paris Hilton wanna be needs in past the velvet ropes of a booze bash. I tried the perfect behavior route. Daily fail. Tried the fix the world route. Couldn’t curb the desire to slap some people. 

Then one day, a friend asked me, “Have you ever thought, what if today was THE DAY Jesus came back?”

Have I?! Oh trust me, I’ve spent  hours on that worry. Especially since I fail at holy rightness at every turn!  I mean, if I need to be a stain free saint to get into Heaven? Well then, I am SOL.

But then it occurred to me…

At the velvet ropes of the Pearly Gates Club, I’m not getting in because I’m the prettiest, the best behaved, or the most philanthropic soul. I’m getting in to that party, the one that truly is TO DIE FOR, because I have a friend in management. 

Now, I do occasionally slip and say sh*t, sometimes even holy sh*t, and I’m not proud of that, but I no longer lose sleep over it. The way I figure it, He’s a real cool guy who understands me. He knows I’d never abuse a friend, not even a celestial one. He knows I’d never  bad mouth Him or his Father… I’d  never pretend I didn’t know  who He is just to look like the cool girl at the party… I’d never strike Him off my earthly party guest list…and I do my best to be kind to His other peeps.

Because in the end, I know my mom was right…best way to have a friend is to be a friend. And Jesus is my friend, and fortunately He understands I make mistakes and He forgives me because He knows… I’m the one who’s human.