The Best Christmas Album... Ever?

This is the second year that my wife and I have celebrated Christmas overseas, apart from our family and in cultures where most people aren’t celebrating at all. Both years, Michael W. Smith’s It’s A Wonderful Christmas (2007) has served as the soundtrack to our holiday. And this year, I am even more convinced that this album is possibly the best work of Christmas music since Handel’s Messiah (1742).

Christmas-themed (or merely “holiday-themed”) albums are churned out with surprising regularity each year by popular musicians – and are usually little more than kitsch. They often appear as just another strategy to cash in on the commercialization of what was once sacred. Most take traditional carols, a few popular standards about snow and Santa Claus, set them all to (fill-in-the-blank-star)’s signature sound, and maybe add an original or two that will most likely be forgotten. The few exceptions that come to mind seem to prove the rule. Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas (Is You)” and Jon Bon Jovi’s “Come Home for Christmas” will probably continue to get airplay, but there’s no sense of awe and wonder. Paul McCartney’s “Merry Christmas (War Is Over)” somehow managed to turn a Christmas/New Years song into a political protest song, which – depending upon how you look it at – is either an amusing trick or a tasteless guesture. Bruce Springsteen belting out “Saaaaaanta Claus Is Coming To Town!” seems more reminiscent of an angry Vietnam vet screaming “Baawwwwwrn in the USA!” – perhaps it was an angry unemployed department-store Santa? And speaking of taste – let’s not even discuss Carman’s A Long Time Ago In a Land Called Bethlehem.

Perhaps the best description of the whole phenomenon comes from the aging rock star in the film Love Actually. While recording a Christmas version of one of his hit songs, he turns off the microphone and says to his manager, “This is [crap]!”

To which his manager replies through the studio intercom, “Yes, but it’s solid-gold [crap]!”

I mention all of the above, just to drive home how unique It’s A Wonderful Christmas truly is. All but one of the songs are self-written originals, over half are instrumentals – and every one is truly captivating. It takes a high degree of confidence in one’s musical abilities to not only believe you can make an original contribution to the canon of Christmas music, but that you can capture the true meaning of the world’s biggest holiday without words or voice. It takes an artist of the highest degree to actually pull it off, and create a work that enraptures the listener. The lyrics are never cheesy and often profound; the music is carried by Smith’s singing and his piano, with some great orchestral work but no sense of over-production. His voice has always has a distinctive edge to it, but here he sounds less like a rocker-become-pop-star and instead evokes the mature masculinity of a West Virginia-raised father of 5 children. Here is worship, awe, wonder, mystery, playfulness, big celebration and quiet contemplation – all of the emotions and memories associated with the best of Christmas tradition.

There are no duds on this album, but two tracks that stand out are “The Promise” (co-written with his oldest son, Ryan) and “Song For the King.” The former conveys the intense longing for the Messiah, before erupting into “we’re singing Hallelujah!” and concluding, “Emmanuel / Our God is with us.” The latter begins with piano, adding violin, and then a whole orchestra, and by the time the violin sings the final high note few listeners will have dry eyes. Elsewhere, bagpipes (“Highland Carol”) and mass choirs (“Sing Noel, Sing Hallelujah”) make appearances, as does guest vocalist Mandisa (“Christmas Day”). The lone cover, the traditional “What Child Is This,” showcases Smith’s unaccompanied piano, as does “Audrey’s Gift.”

Michael W. Smith has been around for nearly three decades. He’s written nearly two hundred songs, one of which played a role in my wife coming to believe in Jesus as a teenager. He created one of the first well-done Christian music videos, successfully crossed-over into the mainstream, performed for the Pope, immortalized Columbine “martyr” Cassie Bernall in song, released two greatest-hits collections, won numerous awards and sold over 13 million albums. But It’s A Wonderful Christmas is his ultimate artistic achievement.

I expect to be listening to it for the rest of my life.

Facing What Giants?

It’s not often that a movie leaves my wife and I feeling worse by the end. In fact, not since we watched Will Smith get devoured by zombies has a film left us feeling down. It’s even more strange when the movie in question is supposedly “created to encourage believers and evangelize non-believers.” But discouragement is exactly what we felt as the final credits rolled for Facing the Giants.

Produced on a shoe-string budget by Sherwood Baptist Church of Albany, GA, with a cast entirely of amateurs, few movies had generated so much buzz in the Christian grapevine. Much of the attention was due to the nature of the film’s making, and an overt gospel message bolstered the strategy of marketing to churches instead of movie theaters. Choosing to center the storyline on a quintessentially American institution – a high-school football team – almost guaranteed rapport with American church audiences.

A brief synopsis: Grant Taylor, head football coach at Shiloh Christian High School, is facing the prospect of losing his job after six straight losing seasons. He’s nearly broke, his car and house are falling apart, and he and his wife Brooke are unable to have children. After a local man who faithfully prays for all of the students gives the coach an inspiring “word from the Lord,” he decides to re-orient his football team and all of his life around trusting God. And one after another, the giants in his life begin to fall.

As Christian film professional Barbara Nicolosi cynically noted in a scathing review,“In short order after he utters the Evangelical commitment formula aloud, he wins back the esteem of his fellow townspeople, he turns around his terrible team so that they win the championship, somebody gives him a brand new shiny red truck, AND his infertile wife becomes pregnant!” Christianity Today was equally harsh, giving it only 1 out of 4 stars. With these reviews in mind, I approached this film with a degree of skepticism. I didn’t expect Facing the Giants to be much of a credit to the artistic contributions of evangelical Christianity.

In fact, the acting (although bad) was bearable, the football scenes are well done, there are some moments of genuine (although not memorable) humor, and a few scenes are truly inspiring – particularly a practice exercise in which a blindfolded player achieves more than he ever thought possible. Taken in context, the surprise gift of the new truck was both moving and believable, and not a “word of faith” sermon illustration . (In fact, something similar happened to us in Kuwait when a pastor gave us a car – BUT we only had it for 6 weeks, and it had 600,000 miles on it). The relationship between the small, soccer-playing placekicker and his wheelchair-bound father is touching, and that the father comes across as authentic is no small feat; as one literary critic notes, a “good man” is one of the hardest characters to portray believably. (Compare to the father in Sherwood’s Fireproof, who often sounds as if he is channeling some overly erudite minister or motivational speaker).

But Nicolosi’s point stands. While many of the individual moments may be the sort of things that Christians come to expect from a God who is at work in the world, the overall arc of the story suggests that merely putting Jesus first will result in “victory” in all areas of life. The characters often talk about trusting God “no matter what,” but they never actually have to – everybody gets what they want. In fact, most things in Grant and Brooke’s life improve immediately.

We all know what it’s like to pray those prayers of total surrender: “Lord, I accept your will regardless of how this turns out.” We often pray them half-heartedly, hoping that God will be impressed enough with our offer to follow Him even if he doesn’t give us what we most want, that He will give it to us anyway. The true test of faith comes when God calls our bluff.

That happened just this past week to a friend here in the Middle East. He had just moved from his parents’ house in South Carolina, and was struggling to adapt to a foreign place. His relationship with his long-time girlfriend, whom he was hoping to marry, was on the rocks. He prayed, putting everything in God’s hands, placing their relationship on the altar.

The next day she broke up with him. I wonder when someone is going to write that into the script of a “Christian movie?”

But we’ve seen substandard movies before. When we stepped off a flight after watching an ensemble cast collectively mangle a witty book that had been reduced to a bad script, we didn’t feel like sitting on the tarmac and moaning. In fact, after the Shiloh Eagles won the state championship, we wanted to cheer just like in any sports movie.

It was the last 5 minutes that killed us.

From the start, it was a foolish choice to relegate infertility – one of the biggest emotional struggles any couple can face – to a subplot in a movie about high school football. Nevertheless, here was a chance to show – in even the smallest way – how two people might choose to place their faith in God’s goodness and sovereignty even when the deepest desires of their hearts were continually frustrated. As an excellent book on the subject notes, “In the Bible, infertility is usually an affliction of the righteous” – and there is no Biblical promise that all Christians will be able to have children. To long and pray for children with no answer, while watching high schoolers get pregnant and welfare cases pop out babies like Pez dispensers, is to die a slow emotional death while being continually slapped in the face with the seeming senselessness of reality. The [assumedly] well-meaning but flippant comments of other Christians only serve as kicks in the one place it most hurts.

To then insinuate in a Christian movie that all one must do is “turn it over to the Lord,” and suddenly you will get pregnant, is little more than an insult to those who are suffering the chronic pain of infertility.

We know: in the past year we lost 2 children in the womb, and do not know if we can ever give birth. After 3 months of our first pregnancy, our prayers were “answered” with a trip to the emergency room with my wife screaming in pain. We have experienced much healing since then, but it has been less like the closure of a wound and more like a cripple learning to walk – every step has been hard-fought and won with perseverance and tears. Had we watched this movie earlier in the year, it is quite possible that it would not have returned to the owner in one piece.

We have now begun the process of adopting children from Ethiopia. On the night we popped in this DVD, hoping for a night of respite from our struggles, we were watching our efforts dissolve in front of our eyes and were one email away from having to give up completely. It was a huge test of faith as we faced a genuine giant – and Facing the Giants merely left us angry with its trivialization of our struggle.

We’ve seen some breakthroughs since then, reminders that the Lord is with us in this journey. And we’re well past letting ourselves get bent out of shape over a poorly made 94-minute movie. At least we finally saw for ourselves just what all the fuss was about. But we won’t be recommending this film to anyone.