Spin Cycle

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee has released a new video wishing viewers a merry Christmas and reminding them what matters at this time of year is remembering the birth of Christ. It's great if you want to wish people a merry Christmas; many people who aren't Christians celebrate it. However, because he's a presidential candidate, I don't think it's acceptable for Huckabee to tell me that I must think about Christ's birth -- I'd rather he tell me to think about feeding the hungry or how we're going to get out of these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Separation of church and state, remember? Besides, 23 percent of the American population isn't Christian, and those people might not be especially concerned with thinking about Christ. That's almost 65 million people, y'all.

In the video, Huckabee is wearing a sensible, "I'm friendly and trustworthy" sweater, and in the background is a Christmas tree. There is also a cross. My ideas about "decorating" with the cross and its glorification of a painful death scene aside, I do not want a president who uses religious imagery in his or her messages. I especially dislike it when it's lied about; Huckabee says it's "just a bookshelf." See for yourself:




Chicago Theological Seminary president Susan Thistlethwaite says it so much better than I can in her editorial in today's The Washington Post.

Republican Representative Steve King of Iowa recently introduced HR 847, a bill “recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.”

That’s it. No action, no progression, no nothing, just a declaration that Christmas Is Important. No work on, say, dismantling the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no finding a solution to global warming, nothing like that. What a tempest in a teapot.

Now, I’m all for Christmas; I believe it’s important to remember the hope of the birth of Christ. I despise the commercialism of the day and would love a return to a day spent with family and going to church. I scoff at advertisers who insist that their clerks and signs declare, “Happy Holidays.” If a store is selling Christmas ornaments and piping in Christmas music, the clerks should be allowed to tell the clients to have a good Christmas. I’m all for calling something what it is.

That is why I have to call King’s bill a waste of time and money. Are Representative King and the others who put their name on this bill performing their duty of representing their constituents? Are those constituents truly concerned about whether the importance of Christmas is formally recognized by the government?

The real war on Christianity here is the war on the poor, the downtrodden, the other. Representative King, Christmas will be fine – it was here long before you and will continue long after we all are gone. I think it is you who is forgetting the “reason for the season.”

Once again it’s the time of year when we decorate trees and go caroling and send cards to our loved ones. We shop and eat and drink too much. And we spend too much money, and gain too much weight, and then New Year’s rolls around, and we promise that next year, we won’t do this to ourselves again.

What if we chose to take an alternative path? What if we stopped overeating and overspending and instead shared some of our excess with others?*

What if we chose to share with those who desperately need something as simple as food to eat? What if there was an easy way to provide a hugely nutritional food for about $1 a day?

Doctors without Borders has found a solution. It’s called Plumpynut, and a 60 Minutes news segment is touting it as possibly “the most important advance ever to cure and prevent malnutrition.”

Plumpynut is an easy-to-prepare paste made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and fortified with vitamins and minerals. It tastes like a peanut butter paste. It is very sweet, and so kids love it.

According to the Doctors without Borders web site, “Current food aid, which focuses on fighting hunger—not on treating malnutrition—is not doing enough to address the needs of young children most at risk.”

Says Doctors Without Borders Chief Nutritionist Dr. Milton Tectonidis, "Now we have something. It is like an essential medicine. In three weeks, we can cure a kid that ... looked like they’re half dead. We can cure them just like [with] an antibiotic…"

Every year, malnutrition kills 5 million children – one every 6 seconds. In Niger, for example, most mothers have watched at least one child die of malnutrition. There, mothers often cannot produce enough milk for their children; other milk, if parents can afford it, can’t be refrigerated, and powdered milk isn’t useful because there’s a lack of clean water with which to mix it. Plumpynut, on the other hand, doesn’t need refrigeration, water, or cooking, overcoming many of the obstacles faced in delivering and using food aid.

At this point of the year, millet is pretty much the only food left in Niger. Millet doesn’t have enough nutrients to keep kids alive – we use it for birdseed in America.

However, with Plumpynut, the 60 Minutes segment says, one six-month-old child gained a pound in a week. One pound may not seem like much, but when you weigh only six pounds, that’s almost seventeen percent of your body weight, and that weight gain is amazing.

In this time when we remember the birth of Christ, please stop to remember God's commandments to take care of one another. Please think of other children and donate to Doctors without Borders. UNICEF also distributes Plumpynut, as does Project Peanut Butter, an NGO in Malawi.

*I am a firm believer in sharing with others throughout the year, not just at happy, fuzzy-inside times like Christmas.