I.

When I touched down on the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport's tarmac last week, I was eager to revive a holiday tradition that really thrills Francisco: reading Southern church signs. Though he's in Cuba for Christmas, the past couple of holiday seasons he's really enjoyed the roadside wisdom offered up by the churches strung along my home state's highways and byways like pearls crowded next to one another on a Southern belle's necklace. As my brother and I zipped along the country road between Rock Hill and Spartanburg, I had my notebook at the ready for anything: the predictable, time-worn favorites, brimstone predictions for 2008, catchy and pithy (often rhyming) quotes that were thought of long and hard before making their way to the marquee. I've never counted, but on the 65 mile stretch of road between these two burbs, I'd estimate there's a good 30 or so churches of mainly Protestant denomination (I can confirm for sure that there is one Catholic church, no temples, and no mosques). Per capita, there's probably one church for every ten people, though their names are a source of constant confusion to me. What's the difference between the First Associate Reform Presbyterian Church and the First Associated Presbyterian Church? It's just a question...

But I digress.

The signs this year have been much like 2007 itself: full of peaks and valleys, with little in between. There was the familiar "Jesus is the Reason for the Season," the mysterious "U R Only 183 Feet from a Miracle," and the questionable "The hinge of history is found on the door of a Bethlehem stable," which gave pause to consider historical accuracy. My favorites, though were "Jesus is calling. Can you hear him? Come closer" and the very best one of all: "Happy Birthday, Son ---God." 

II.

As if the sheer number of signs proclaiming the good news was not enough, some Christians in my hometown have been up in arms this week and have taken it upon themselves to tell everyone how we should feel about the holiday that's now just hours away. Putting their pens to paper, they have written “The Stroller,” a man whose column in the local paper merely consists of serving as a conduit for the community’s voice (though it’s not a chorus he’s singing). One writer, echoing complaints I've read throughout this week, declared to anyone who cares that he refuses to shop at stores that wish their shoppers "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," a practice he considers an insult to Christians by pandering to “non-believers.”

At a cafe in the next town over, I was eavesdropping on another table, where a waitress was telling a friend about a soldier in Iraq. She was describing how the soldier would be celebrating Christmas--enjoying the USO-sponsored appearances of celebrities ranging from the cyclist Lance Armstrong to comedian Robin Williams. "Yeah," she said, cracking her gum, "You know those silly Islams; they don't believe in God so they don't celebrate Christmas." I groaned into my black bean soup but decided against telling her that, at the very least, she could refer to "those" people as Muslims, not "Islams."  

It was all enough to make my Christmas spirit vanish as fast as Santa Claus disappearing up a chimney.

Although I'm not Jewish, I'm with Adam Gopnik, a self-described "secularist and melancholic Jew," who says everyone can learn some important lessons from Christmas. In his recently broadcast reflection on the NYC subway attack of a man who wished someone “Happy Hanukkah,” Gopnik, at turns funny and solemn, said one reason for this season is to teach us patience and to build our capacity for waiting. It’s to teach us to be prepared for a miracle, but never to expect it, and to realize that a good bit of our experience is not about what happens to us, but how we react to and interpret what happens to us. They're lessons that are good for everyone, no matter what name we attach to them. 

In this season, I think we call all learn some important lessons from each other, too, and a good one to start the new year would be tolerance in a world so desperately in need of it. Happy holidays… whatever your reason for celebrating--or not.