Did you enjoy half-Christmas this Thursday? I sure did.
I mean, you’ve been outside recently, right? Feel the sweat spewing from your brow as soon as you hit your porch? Me too. We’ve been writing some new pages for the camp playbooks with this drastic heat-wave Texas is feeling. Some involve changing up the daily schedule a little bit (we now do most sweat-causing things in the morningtime). And some… some involve creating whole holidays out of thin air.
Especially ones that bring to mind a colder time of year.
See, most Americans celebrate half-Christmas in July (well, IF they celebrate it at allllll), but since that’s on a weekend, we went ahead and had our very merry Outback Christmas on June 25. Don’t get jealous that we got to:
-Dress in all green and red. My only green stuff was a pair of Smartwool hiking socks stuffed into TOMS. That made my feet humanitarian, toasty, and really dry all at the same time.
-Have a liquid snowball fight. You contain liquid snowballs in water balloons. See also shaving cream (so that we had fluffy white material adding to the illusion).
-Invite Santa Claus to eveningtime Flag Lowering. In lieu of reindeer, we used a half-blind horse with antlers attached to his headgear. And a red nose. Santa always must be preceded by a red nose.
The coolest part by far, however, was seeing how our staff pulled it off. From our work crew sprint-decorating our dining hall on Wednesday night to counselors who got their kids to sell out and rejoice in faux-holiday cheer, I’m realizing that this is neat ministry. Four weeks ago, some of these colleagues were just figuring out what counseling WAS. Now they’re on top of the game enough to change things around for a bit. That’s a FAST progression. And I think that’s totally enabled by grace.
This week is the last for a lot of our staff; after July 4, we’ll bring in a whole new crew of counselors to finish out the summer (we work on a halves-based system). It’ll be sad to see these guys go. But too, I’m looking forward to see what’s cooking for next half.
Unless “cooking” means “more heat wave.” In that case, cool me down…
Ben Humeniuk 
I’ve never even heard of ‘half-Christmas’! What have I been missing??
But I have heard of heat. It’s unbelievable here in SE Asia, lemme tell ya. I feel yo pain.
oh fuzz ball. These posts make me happy. It is strange that the 4th and Christmas in July both happen on a weekend…way to adapt 🙂
and it’s a little warm where I am too…but I don’t think I’ll know the extent of it until the middle of July…but I’ll keep my dry heat over that sick-nasty humidity any day…
I’m praying for week five brother!