Scott Douglas Vaughan

All who know me know that I love the church. Still, Vicki and I did not take our boys to Christmas Eve services. The Brotherhood - Once Upon A Time Here's why: The idea behind a Christmas Eve service is worship, right? At the time, our church did not offer childcare for smaller children, which meant - for us - four very excited little boys prevented everyone within a 50-foot radius from experiencing worship. We may have been agents of the devil. For an hour, Vicki and I experienced whispering, standing up and sitting down, pleas for the bathroom, and goofy excitement. At one point, Richard began crawling underneath the pew. William joined him. They wrestled. I left the Christmas Eve service mad at my boys, and that was a crappy attitude to have on Christmas Eve. So, we replaced Christmas Eve services with Hollywood. We went to the movies. Then we came home and made Philly Cheesesteaks, watched some Rankin-Bass Christmas cartoons, and everyone went to bed happy and with ...

If this were our last Christmas - and it could be. We would not care about gifts received. We would not make wish lists nor encourage others to do so. We would make a list of the people we love, and think of one thing to give each person - one thing that would forever remind them of our love for them. We would give ourselves - our treasures - away. Nothing would be "too much trouble." We would turn off mobile telephones, televisions, and computers. We would send Christmas cards. We would get out and about, we would go to parties, we would be the Christmas cheer in the middle of the chaos. We would jump at the chance to laugh with others rather than sit alone, comfortably, in the same old chair and in the same old room doing the same old things. We would be hospitable because the Bible tells us that we must. We must open the doors of our homes and invite people inside to laugh and love and sing and play games and tell stories. And, if invited to embrace someone else...