I take a lot of enjoyment from looking at home exteriors decorated for Christmas. I love the tasteful string of lights as well as the garish lawn covered with inflatable Santas and reindeer. But one decoration has grown in popularity in recent years that has left me scratching my head. Our popular celebration of Christmas has adopted the North Pole and all things Arctic even if they have nothing to do with first century Palestine. Fair enough. I present to you these exhibits from my neighborhood:

Exhibit A. Notice that this exterior is covered with all sorts of Arctic symbolism. Two Santa Clauses, reindeer (inflatable and illuminated), inflatable carousel, etc. Notice, however, the decoration in the upper right hand corner of the picture.

A penguin wearing a Santa hat.

Exhibit B.

More penguins. Wearing more Santa hats.

What gives? Penguins are Antarctic animals, not Arctic. Perhaps one could say that these decorations aren’t confusing the Earth’s poles, but I doubt it. To support my claim, I present to you Exhibit C.

A penguin on an igloo. In cased you missed it, I’ll repeat myself. A penguin. On an igloo.

There are no igloos near the South Pole because no indigenous people live there. Nor are there any penguins near where the Eskimos have ever lived. Ridiculous. I hope Santa brings a lot of people atlases for Christmas.

Erika Haub is kicking your butt, and you don’t even know it.

She is a fantastic blogger with lots of great earthy-spiritual insight. Check out these posts for a sampling:

1. Good enough.


2. One more.


3. Does Sunday morning really matter?

Great googley moogley! Student Recites 8,784 Digits of Pi.

The amazing thing about this fact is that Gaurav Rajav’s (the student) feat makes him only third best in the US and twelfth best in the world in terms of Pi recitation.

As a former student of Greek, I feel I must offer this public service announcement. Pi in Greek is not pronounced, “pie,” but “pee.” But considering its popular use in mathematics and other scientific fields, the “pie” pronunciation is acceptable…just don’t say “pie” in your Koine Greek class. Consider yourselves warned, people.

The word exegete is a noun, not a verb. An exegete is a person who performs an exegesis. There is no verb form of the word.

Given the current trend to use the word as a verb, however, exegete will likely evolve into a verb. I will say that I’m amazed by how many people in seminary use the word as a verb. As Calvin says, “Verbing weirds language.”