There is an old news story that has been imprinted on my mind since I was a 4-year-old child. In July of 1960, a 7-year-old boy named Roger Woodward was swept over the edge of Niagara Falls and dropped nearly 200 feet into the roiling waters below. He survived.

I had a short career in the animated film industry as an animator of such popular cartoons as Scooby Doo and The Flintstones. Every Saturday morning, I not only watched the cartoons I had animated, but also the credits that ran at the end just to see my name in them.

Not long ago, my wife and I had breakfast at a restaurant that has become our favorite breakfast destination. I had eggs benedict: two poached eggs, each set atop a piece of Canadian bacon and a halved English muffin, then blanketed with a hollandaise sauce. They were delicious. Eggs benedict is a dish of misnomers: the bacon is not Canadian, the muffin is not British, and France, not Holland, is the country of origin for the sauce. A label is no guarantee of authenticity.

The congregation I serve as pastor, is a church plant of the Evangelical Free Church of America. Yes, we are as advertised, evangelicals, though these days with gluten-free, sugar-free, and caffeine-free products, a person might surmise we are not.

The day after Christmas, what my kin call Boxing Day, a kinsman posted on Facebook pictures of various Christmas cards reading, “JOY to the world!” and “Peace on Earth,” then gave this advice for the new year, “We must find joy where we can since peace eludes us.” At first blush, this advice seems insightful given the bleak state of our world; news outlets are awash with reports of crime and war. Peace on earth seems nonexistent and joy a rare commodity. The reason these proclamations of joy and peace seem such non sequiturs is that they have been reduced to mere holiday slogans severed from their source.

My attitude toward New Years Eve has been a mixed bag. As a kid, it was the one day of the year that I was allowed to stay up late, but I never could stay awake. In college, New Years Eve always promised a raucous party, one that I would never be able to remember the next day. When I joined a band, New Years Eve became the night I made “big” money doing something I loved.

It is December, and our neighborhoods have exploded with strings of sparkling lights spilling off roofs and hugging hedges. The colder, crisper nights, like the pathetic fallacy of a Shakespearean play, have lent a modicum of credibility to the artificial icicles dripping off the eaves. Chubby inflatable snowmen, Santas, and cartoon characters sway gently in the chilly breeze in improvised choreography to some unheard night song. Nativity scenes softly lit offer a quiet counterpoint to the eclectic spectacle, reminding those who dare to ponder that there is a Christ whose quiet incarnation in Bethlehem brought hope to the world.

Over four of the five weeks of December, many churches will, in some fashion, observe the season of Advent. By most liturgical calendars, Advent began the last Sunday in November, but the church I pastor, like some other churches, has opted to begin its observance on the first Sunday of December and ending on Sunday morning, December 24.

My closet has been the longtime home of two shirts. Like the best of friends, they literally have had my back through thick and thin offering their familiar and comfortable embrace. Cotton. Soft. A comfy fit. They are my favorite shirts.

I have an idol…well, not really an idol, but a TV character whom I jokingly claim to be my hero. His name is Onslow, and he is the brother-in-law of Hyacinth Bucket, much to her chagrin. The TV show is “Keeping Up Appearances,” a Brit-com in which Hyacinth, a matronly woman with working-class roots, desperately tries to prove to everyone that she is upper class. “It’s Boo-kay!” she corrects with exasperation whenever anyone correctly pronounces her last name as “Bucket.” Her henpecked husband, Richard, resignedly goes along with her elaborate attempts to put on airs. Unfortunately, her relatives keep showing up.