3 Doors down - Citizen Soldier

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJRthpxDM10

3 Doors down made a music video for the US National Guard.

I saw this music video in the theaters and my first and only thought was "Wow, someone got it right!"

Other than that, the song speaks for itself.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the discussion.

Christmas

You know, I’m not one of those people who thinks that (the pre-ghost) Ebenezer Scrooge had it right, but I am really getting more and more disenchanted by the whole “Christmas” experience. For starters, my two favorite Radio stations went to all Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving… Joy! My Wife wants to decorate the house (actually, she already has) and put on 1960’s Christmas music. My In-laws like to spend all of Christmas eave watching “the Muppet Christmas Carroll” and then my father in law pulls out his guitar and they sing more Christmas oldies. Christmas morning, we all have to take turns trying to figure out what the clues on our gifts are (and yes, everyone is supposed to put clues on their gifts) and then we open the gifts… one at a time.

Does all this sound fun to you? If it does, then I guess you’re lucky, because for me its northing but one annoyance after another.

I really am not thrilled with what “modern” music has done to Christmas in general That’s not an absolute statement. There are plenty of songs that I really enjoy from all decades… but “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree”, “Jungle Bell rock” and “grandma Got run over my a Reindeer” don’t really cut it for me.

I’m not a classic ‘family’ type guy. I love my wife and kid, don’t get me wrong. But when I grew up, my parents gave me my space. I was able to sit in a corner chair and enjoy Dads collection of old Christmas hymn Records, or look at the pile of wrapped gifts underneath the tree, or just sit in my room and relax. Christmas was never a time for me to party, or hang out, it was a time to enjoy the piece of the season, and to reflect on what I was grateful for. Every Christmas eave, Dad and I would go out and pick up a subway six-foot sub and the whole family would piecemeal it over the course of the night while we did the final prep for Christmas dinner the next day and added the final preparations to the tree and the house for the inevitable guests that usually descended on the place the next day. Now, with my in-laws seventy miles away and my parents fifteen hundred, I have to put up with a father in law who doesn’t quite get the fact that I don’t consider him family, and a mother in law who doesn’t have the guts to tell me when she has a problem with something I said or did, and instead sits on it and stews until I have to hear about it from her son…

I know I’ll never have back the type of Christmas I had with my family before I left for school, but I’m okay with that. And to their credit, my in-laws don’t force me to participate in their traditions (except the clues on the gifts one [rolling my eyes at the thought of it]), but sitting in the upstairs office and surfing the internet on Christmas eave is a poor alternative. I technically have a free pass, no-questions-asked, to leave and go wherever I want. But where do I go? I don’t have many friends in Tulsa, and those that I do have know me and my wife, meaning that they’ll get the wrong idea if I stop off for a Christmas eave visit without her.

What’s my idea of the perfect Christmas?

For me, its a chance to fit by the fireplace and watch an old movie like Holiday Inn. Maybe put in an old copy of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or even a Manheim Steamroller CD. A chance to reflect quietly, to be alone, to think, the ponder, to pray.

Does that sound depressing?

It doesn’t for me. It sounds like a chance to remember why the holiday is so important to me. Jesus probably didn’t even have a proper fire when he was borne, I can only imagine what hurdles Joseph had to go through to heat the stable for his wife and son. They didn’t have music, and the shepherds probably didn’t come for a few days, the trek into Bethlehem couldn’t have been a short walk. I’ve heard some people argue that the wise men from the east could have taken as much as two or three years to make their trip. Christ was probably a toddler before they laid eyes on him.

Christmas marks the birth of a figure that is the cornerstone of my faith. Weather or not he was actually born on that date, I don’t know, and lacking any substitute, I don’t really care. Its my chance to remember what I have, and what price my God paid to give that to me.