An Open Letter to People who Celebrate Christmas before Thanksgiving

Dear People who Celebrate Christmas before Thanksgiving,

What’s your deal? Seriously Nostradamus, who gave you permission to rearrange the calendar? Last time I checked, November comes before December. That also means that Thanksgiving comes before Christmas. So you better get your facts, and holidays, straight.

You are probably thinking, “Why does he hate Christmas so much?” The truth is that I don’t hate Christmas. If anything, I love Christmas too much. I love decorating the tree. I like giving and receiving presents. I like miniature ceramic displays of 18th century England. But I also like order. I like things where they belong. It’s the same reason I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in September. Socks go inside shoes. First comes love THEN comes marriage. Thanksgiving THEN Christmas. Not the other way around.

I recognize that the odds are stacked against you. Everyone from Abercrombie to Sears and Roebuck to the ghost of Sam Walton wants you to celebrate Christmas as early as possible. They figure that if you start celebrating in August, you’ll start buying gifts in August. That’s why there were Christmas trees up in Lowes the first week of October. That’s why Hollywood released Jim Carrey’s Christmas Carol movie in July. And that’s why you’re now wearing a Christmas sweater and listening to Mannheim Steamroller in 80 degree weather. It just seems a little forced.

Yes, the Christmas season is a magical time. Memories are made 'round the fire. Yuletide cheer abounds. We allow our children to sit on the laps of velvet-wearing, unemployed men and ask for wishes. But Christmas should be about quality, not quantity. You have to pace yourself. If you break out the tree in September, bake cookies in October, carol in November you have used up all of the good stuff Christmas-y things by Black Friday.

Which brings me to my next point; why does Thanksgiving have to get the shaft so you can listen to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you” on Veteran’s Day? Do you really think that the pilgrims fled from political and religious persecution so you could be so selfish? Yeah, that’s right. Celebrating Christmas in November is selfish. Besides, Thanksgiving is a good holiday. There’s turkey and parades and predictable yet inspirational sports movies. C'mon, slow down and enjoy this holiday before the liberals take it away!

Trust me, there is enough Christmas to go around. There is a season for everything. And I tend to believe that there is a pretty good season set aside just for Christmas. Take a breath. Let’s all be patient. Christmas will be there on the other side of Thanksgiving. There's no need for premature immaculate conception celebration. I’ll be putting up the tree November 29th. I hope you’ll join me.

Let’s keep Christ in Christmas… and keep Christmas in December.

Happy Holidays (in order),
Eric D. Epperson

OU - Kansas State highlight video

More Zambia Shorts

Here another Zambia clip for your viewing enjoyment.

My mom is an elementary school teacher. The following clip looks a lot like the kids I remember from her classroom. What's the problem here? Perhaps the teacher is not giving the proper amount of positive reinforcement that lines up with each individual child's learning style. Perhaps... my opinion is that kids are just plain crazy... all over the world.

Zambia Shorts

I'll continue to put clips from the Zambia trip up in the coming days. Here are a few of my favorites.

I guess a van full of white people with big cameras is not something the kids in Zambia see everyday. So every time we jumped out of the van, 50 kids would run up to us. This made it very difficult to get isolated shots. During one attempt, MD asked if I could distract the masses. Clapping seemed to be the international language.


This was one of the most difficult shots to manage but ended up being one of my favorites. We asked the teachers if we could listen to the children sing sometime before they ate lunch. The teachers took that to mean "right now!" Before we could finish getting set up, the teachers stopped their lessons and marched 150 kids out to the schoolyard. They lined up and started singing. We scrambled around to get the audio ready. They just continued to sing. This footage is probably 10 minutes into their singing when we finally got things set up.


We spent a lot of time with a young lady named Abigail and her family. They get water out of a well in their front yard. This is a shot of her little brother getting water.


More videos to come!

Zambia Filming - Day 1

Things are going well here in Zambia. We had a productive day of filming. We went to church in the morning. They sang for an hour and a half... they were supposed to sing for an hour... that's 30 minutes over... somewhere Jayson French was crying and didn't know why.

If there is a perk to the trip being extended two days it's that we haven't had to rush a story that wasn't fully developed. We spent some valuable time scouting locations, meet people, and storyboard ideas. We did shoot the SuperStart and believe short today. You will all love Abigail. She is the oldest of 6 kids and lives in a small but clean concrete house. She's in 6th grade. She wants to be a journalist someday so she was very excited about taking part in this. I don't know how these things work themselves out sometimes! Strange huh?

Below you'll see a scene at the MacKenzie neighborhood primary school. The buckets you see in the shot weigh about 40 pounds when full. Some kids carry two at a time. We're learning a lot about the system SHIP runs here. You see, wells by themselves are not the answer. When it comes to clean water, it's not always access but it is always sanitation.

With that in mind, I'm pretty stoked about the SS! and believe goal. SHIP believes in bio-sand filters. They clean 98% of the bugs in the water... no matter where the water comes from. We're drinking out of one this week. Studies have shown that getting a BSF in a house is the fastest way to improve the health of a family. They are practically a status symbol here in Ndola.

I'm also very happy to report that Josh Hall is the most important white guy to come to Zambia since Dr. Livingston. We were in a school yesterday when all of a sudden the kids started calling Josh "Big Show." They were practically chanting, "Big Show! Big Show! Big Show!" He didn't disappoint either.

We're excited about the days to come. The story is working itself out. The SHIP staff has been great.

On a personal note, I stayed up late last night to track the OU game via espn.com gamecast. We have to figure out a way to score touchdowns when in the red zone. You can't beat Texas with field goals.

On last thing, a bunch of you keep updating your facebook status with remarks about how cold it is in Joplin. It's 96 here. Knock it off. And no, you don't need to turn the heat on when it is 50 degrees.

Zambia

A small team and I are leaving for Zambia this evening to film a documentary for CIY MOVE 2010. Stay tuned for upcoming details.

Close Calls

After a recent one point loss to BYU, I began to wonder if the Sooners were capable of gutting out a close win. My hypothesis was that they had lost the ability to win in the fourth quarter after Mike Stoops left for Arizona late in the 2003 season. I figured it had something to do with the toughness, particularly on the defensive side of the ball, that those teams seemed to possess. I didn't want to let my feelings get the best of me so I ran the numbers. Here's what I discovered.

OU record in games decided by a touchdown or less in the Bob Stoops era (1999 – present)

WIN
11/11/00 Oklahoma 35, Texas A&M 31
11/25/00 Oklahoma 12, Oklahoma State 7
12/02/00 Oklahoma 27, Kansas State 24
09/29/01 Oklahoma 38, Kansas State 37
01/01/02 Oklahoma 10, Arkansas 3
10/05/02 Oklahoma 31, Missouri 24
09/06/03 Oklahoma 20, Alabama 13
10/30/04 Oklahoma 38, Oklahoma State 35*
11/06/04 Oklahoma 42, Texas A&M 35*
10/22/05 Oklahoma 37, Baylor 30 (2OT)*
10/29/05 Oklahoma 31, Nebraska 24*
11/12/05 Oklahoma 36, Texas A&M 30*
12/29/05 Oklahoma 17, Oregon 14*
09/02/06 Oklahoma 24, UAB 17*
11/04/06 Oklahoma 17, Texas A&M 16*
11/25/06 Oklahoma 27, Oklahoma State 21*
10/06/07 Oklahoma 28, Texas 21*

LOSS
10/02/99 Notre Dame 34, Oklahoma 30
12/31/99 Mississippi 27, Oklahoma 25
11/24/01 Oklahoma State 16, Oklahoma 13
11/09/02 Texas A&M 30, Oklahoma 26
01/04/04 LSU 21, Oklahoma 14*
09/03/05 TCU 17, Oklahoma 10*
11/19/05 Texas Tech 23, Oklahoma 21*
09/16/06 Oregon 34, Oklahoma 33*
01/01/07 Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42 (OT)*
09/29/07 Colorado 27, Oklahoma 24*
11/17/07 Texas Tech 34, Oklahoma 27*
09/05/09 BYU 14, Oklahoma 13*

Overall in Bob Stoops Era: 17 and 12
With Mike Stoops: 7 and 4
*Without Mike Stoops: 10 and 8

MOVE 2009

I’ll be honest. I can be somewhat of a skeptic. Admittedly, I have no real reason to be. More times that not, God has come through for me. I’ve been able to witness some pretty amazing things. I’ve even seen what some might consider a miracle or two. But God continues to exceed my expectations. This summer proved to be another example on an ever-increasing list labeled “Eric’s faith is too small.”

MOVE Friday night. I saw six of them this summer. But whether it was Oregon or Tennessee didn’t matter. They all looked the same. As each evening came to a close, we’d call the students’ attention to a little green envelope they received earlier that night. The instructions were pretty simple. Inside the envelope was a task, one of fifty tasks to be exact. If you open the envelope, you have to complete the task. Be careful because the tasks are really hard. In fact, you probably shouldn’t open the envelope. Seriously, don’t open the envelope.

We didn’t want it to feel like manipulation. There was a safety hatch if they wanted to bail. It wasn’t just rhetoric either. These tasks really were tough. One of the fifty said to collect 500 coats for needy kids in your community. Another required the recipient to learn a foreign language and go to a country where it is spoken next summer. Another said to skip prom. What? Skip prom? I’d rather go to Burma!

Each week I stood on stage after making the pitch and watched as hundreds of students threw my warning to the side and stood to say that they were going to open the card. Remember that scene in the proverbial movie where the heroic captain/school teacher/vegan was going to be killed/fired/made to drink milk unless he surrendered/stopped using rap music to teach poetry/ate a hamburger but then all of the sailors/students/PETA supporters stood up in his defense? That’s what it was kind of like. There was always crazy determination in their eyes. High school students are gutsy, they really are gutsy.

I’d select a few from the standing and bring them up on stage to open their card in front of everyone. Chris opened his card in Tennessee and learned that he wouldn’t be buying any new clothes for a year. He made the commitment, in front of 1,200 people, to give that money to the children’s ministry at his church. Chris in gutsy, really gutsy.

Yet Chris isn’t alone. There were literally thousands of other students who stepped up and accepted the challenge to be a kingdom worker this summer. Right now, these stories are playing out in soup kitchens, recycling centers, and locker rooms all over the country. You should get involved too… at your own risk of course.

Go to www.weamplify.com to see the stories of these gutsy kingdom workers.