Christmas On My Computer

Friday I met some of our kids for breakfast up at Dave’s Diner to celebrate birthdays (two this week) and to plan if or where the whole family would attend a midnight service on Christmas Eve.

We all want to go together.

We all want to go different places.

We all agree that we want to attend a church with stained glass windows.

Negotiations are ongoing.

After breakfast they went shopping; I returned home to my computer. I began to realize what a huge role it plays in my life now. Even in how I celebrate Christmas.

My books sell online; I order gifts online; I check football schedules, weather reports, and tv listings online; I send e-mail cards; I enjoy blog friends online. I even decorate online.

I live a virtual life.

In a recent past blog I mentioned how I collected a set of online photos of ladies in (or mostly out of ) Santa suits to make a screensaver for my computer.

Well, while waiting for Ginny to get off work and start our long Christmas weekend vacation, I put that screensaver together.

I did another one featuring winter scenes in Currier & Ives prints.

Ginny stayed at her office catching up chores before taking off, so I made still another screensaver featuring stained glass windows.

Got to keep myself amused somehow.

First I did a Google search for stained glass windows — that turned up guys wanting to sell me one. Then I did a search for Our Church Windows — that turned up better pictures.

A good place to start is http://www.freefoto.com/browse.jsp?id=05-14-0 where I found a number of intriguing windows.

To make a slideshow, I’d select a photo, right click to Save As into a folder, then drag and drop all the windows in the folder into my Make Your Own Screensaver program (You can find a bunch of those at http://www.freesaver.com/tools01.htm )

My screensavers turned out great!

The window above is a Biblia Pauerum or Poor Man’s Bible window at Canterbury. I think it dates back to the 1300s.

The idea was that while poor people might not be able to read, they could learn the Gospel from the bright panels of the window which depict different Bible stories.

For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Man%27s_Bible#The_Biblia_Pauperum

In the 1600s Roundheads under Olive Cromwell smashed stained glass windows in many English churches; they felt the windows constituted a subtle form of idolatry. Being an iconoclast myself, I think they had a point. God is Spirit and too great to be captured in mere images; nevertheless, I appreciate the windows as an art form.

If you prefer non-religious stained glass windows, check out the giants of learning and literature windows at Harvard at: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~memhall/staingls.html

Anyhow, I dabbled at constructing holiday screensavers all day Friday.

The decorations tell a lot about my character.

The dirty old man side of my nature expresses itself in the screensaver of Santa ladies frolicking around a Christmas tree in various states of undress. My interest in quaint antique things shows up in the Currier & Ives saver. And my joy in great art appears in the stained glass windows saver.

Were I a more serious Christian, I doubt if I’d have wasted a day fiddling with any of these ghee haws. I did have serious work to do which I neglected to play with my computer.

I know that I contain a mixture of diverse elements, some ok and some not so nice, but somewhere in this mix the Spirit of God has a toehold making me rejoice and celebrate — appropriately or inappropriately — that the Savior Christ the Lord is come.

That’s why this particular window struck my fancy: