God Rest Ye Hairy Gentlemen

The Christmas Season is a reflective time of year and I like to reflect upon my spiritual roots.

There is a misconception that I was raised as a Southern Baptist. I was not. I was raised a Christian, ha, ha.

Here’s the story. My Uncle was raised in Texas and through a series of jobs found himself in Mississippi and met my Aunt. The next job took him to Marietta, Georgia. World War II came and went. Soon, my Uncle and Aunt had twins. My mother, who was trying to escape Mississippi and a horn dog boyfriend, moved to Georgia to help my Aunt with the twins.  My Uncle was a member of The Christian Church and when mom moved Georgia, she joined that church because “Baptists vote on you”.

Once in Georgia, my mother met my father, who was a Methodist. So, once they married, they went to The Christian Church too, whose minister was a gentleman named Jack Daniels. I am not making that up. 
 
The Christian Church, for you church history buffs out there, is a denomination that doesn’t claim to be a denomination but for the sake of not going crazy when writing about it you call it a denomination. It was part of “The Restoration Movement”, which began in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s and their mission was to “restore” Christianity to back to its First Century roots.

However, like most things Church related, “The Restoration Movement” split into three factions. One was The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). These were the liberal guys. The preachers wore robes (you would not believe how controversial that is) and you heard some really great book reviews as sermons. The most famous member of this branch was Lyndon Baines Johnson. The church with the Jack Daniels pastor was a Disciples church.

Of course, if there is a liberal side, there has to be a conservative side. This faction is The Church of Christ. They do not use musical instruments in these churches. I would advise you not to ask.

Well, in the mid-60’s, Mom and Dad had all of their stair-step kids and moved from our two bedroom house in East Cobb, to a four bedroom house in East Cobb, that was next door to the junior high school and across the street from Wheeler High School. Next door to Wheeler  was built the third kind of “Restoration Movement” church: The Christian Church. It was different from The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) mainly because it was more conservative than that branch but it wasn’t as Conservative as The Church of Christ. Mom decided, in a moment of deep spiritual consideration, that we should go to the church that was closest to us. Thus began my decades long affiliation with The Christian Church that wasn’t The Disciples of Christ.

It was difficult to explain your church to others. When someone asked me what I was and I said “Christian”, they would press further by saying they were a Methodist, Baptist, etc, Christian, and I just said I was a “Christian,Christian”.

It was really a neat a little church and I have life long friends (and a wife) that I met there. Probably, though, when I think back to my childhood days at that church, I think about The Christmas plays that were performed.

Every year, the church allowed the children to put on a Christmas play that would retell the birth of Christ. The year I got my glasses was probably the most memorable.

It was 1967 and I had been alive for eight years. No one ever noticed that I was near sighted. It didn’t make an impression that I sat close to the TV or that I held the book close to my face. Or that I couldn’t catch a ball. That’s just Alan.

But, late that fall there was an eye exam given at school and lo and behold, I was as blind as a bat. I was prescribed a pair of glasses known in the optometry world as “Coke Bottles”. The fuzzy world became clear.

I had my glasses only a few weeks when The Christmas play practice began. I had the part of a Shepherd. We were to watch over our flocks by night. The head shepherd was an adult named Ned and he had the shepherd lines in the play. The problem was he couldn’t remember his lines. I remember being on stage and Ned not remembering to say “Behold, let us go to Bethlehem and find this baby” without another eight year old shepherd boy (Gary) who had memorized the lines repeating it to him.

The director of the play was a rather rotund women who insisted on historical accuracy in this production. So, all us shepherd boys, the oldest was probably eleven, were placed in make up and given beards. I had a white beard. I looked like the abdominal snow man in “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer”.  She also insisted that I should not wear my glasses because they didn’t have glasses back in Biblical times.

I told my mom about that and she hit the ceiling. I remember her coming to the dressing room and telling the director that I had to wear my glasses because I couldn’t see. I also remember her telling the director that “this ain’t Broadway”.

I sit back and I think about this a lot. It didn’t bother the director that an eight boy has a beard, but wearing glasses was just such an historical error. But, it is still a pleasant memory, when I found out what I would look like with a beard and that my mother would stick up for me and my glasses.