Christ in Christmas

 

Christmas time is a magical celebration where people are trying to be more charitable, and it is fun to witness. People go out of their way to care for those in need, give gifts to those they love, and try to be more like Jesus. I have been a recipient of receiving anonymous gifts for my family while being in graduate school and I am grateful for it. I believe that they are blessed for their charity. One day I will be able to do the same to other families that have a tight budget. Recently us geeks shared our favorite Christmas traditions. I would like to share another tradition we do on Christmas Eve.

 

We celebrate Jesus’ birth on Christmas, but He more than a baby born in a manger. I loved Elder Gary E. Stevenson talk in April 2023 “The Greatest Easter Story Ever Told” he quoted a “New Testament scholar N. T. Wright suggested: ‘Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity.’” So, on Christmas Eve we have a Passover dinner to remind us of Christ’s loving sacrifice. 

 

We sit on the ground with blankets spread around the floor in dim light and we eat plain foods that could have been in a Passover meal. “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ” – 2 Nephi 25:26

After the meal is over, we all take turns reading Luke 2 because this is what this holiday represents, his birth. This is not my family tradition, but my in-laws and I like it and will continue this tradition in the future. 

Image: Nancy Lee Moran

I am grateful that our Savior was born and that we can learn about his teachings. I believe in Jesus Christ. I know that he cares for each of us and wants to help us return to live with our Heavenly Father again. As we pray and read His words we can learn of His love.  

LDS Geeks Podcast #8: New Digimon 02 Movie

In November, a new Digimon movie was in theaters for only a couple days (one day dubbed and one day subbed). I was blessed to discover a couple of closet Digimon fans among my friends, so three of us went to see it. A sequel or follow-up to Digimon Adventure Last Evolution Kizuna, this movie followed the kids from Digimon Adventure 02. Since it left me with so much to think about, I invited a guest geek Patrick (one of the friends I went with) to discuss it with me on our podcast. Enjoy!

--Spencer

Who are Teen Girl Squad?

One of my favorite tropes in any kind of media or storytelling medium is the story within the story. A character is a writer and as you stay with the story you eventually become familiar with the work of that character. It creates a whole new facet of the book. The world feels deeper as a result of seeing this person through the lens of the works they choose.

That’s Teen Girl Squad, within Strongbad’s world. Teen Girl Squad is zany, totally random and surreal. It happens on the pages of a college ruled, spiral bound notebook, as if Strongbad was passing the time during a boring junior high biology class by drawing the girls in his class suffering their ends by dinosaurs, robots, a middle-age balding, pocket-protector wearing man breathing a swarm of arrows, the list goes on and does not get less weird.

And it’s hilarious. Anybody who knows a male under the age of, oh, sixty-five will probably attest that he has a significant portion of his brain devoted to this kind of humor. The jokes don’t make sense, the humor is definitely childish and wildly aggressive.

The bonus is that Strongbad does all the voices, and occasionally makes cameos in his own comic. Despite inflicting numerous battle scars, he still has the idea that he would be a great date for Cheerleader, or The Ugly One (following her sweet-someteen birthday party glow-up).

So, if you’ve never heard of Teen Girl Squad, it will probably be hard to get into unless you can put yourself in the mind of a thirteen or fourteen year-old boy. If you can’t do that, imagine if Mean Girls was piloted as a cartoon with a budget of approximately eight dollars, but still managed to become an internet classic because they assigned the Brothers Chaps to direct and produce it.

What to Know About Daredevil

One month until Disney Plus releases all episodes of Echo. The titular character Maya Lopez was introduced in Hawkeye, but never under her comic book alias. Since she has a history with Wilson Fisk/Kingpin and both Kingpin and his nemesis Daredevil/Matt Murdock are set to appear in Echo, I wanted to do a little run down on Daredevil’s MCU history. At Dallas Fan Expo 2023, Charlie Cox said you don't need to watch Netflix's Daredevil for the new stuff, but still it's sorta canon. But instead of doing a binge list for this hero, I’m just going to highlight his history, since plenty of our readers won’t want to watch Netflix’s TV-MA Daredevil series. Without further ado, here’s the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

The Origin Story (Pre-2015)

As a young boy, Matt Murdock was blinded and given enhanced senses due to a chemical spill. He grew up a devout Catholic, even after his father died. A blind man named Stick taught him to fight in preparation for the war with the Hand… but Matt wasn’t into a war.

In college, he became friends with Foggy and later they started a pro bono practice. Near the beginning of the series, Karen begins working for them after they save her. And that’s the beginning of their law firm: Nelson and Murdock. And the beginning of our story. 

Daredevil Season 1 (early 2015)

In secret, Matt chased down criminals (child/sex trafficking-type criminals to be exact) until he chanced upon Fisk’s name. Over the course of the first season, Matt keeps taking down parts of Fisk’s criminal empire. Even once Fisk is in the open, he can’t be taken down. With the help of a crooked cop saved from Fisk’s kill list, they’re able to put Fisk away legally… until Fisk escapes. But the newly armored Daredevil is able to take him down and send him to jail!

Daredevil Season 2 (late 2015)

When the second season opened, Nelson and Murdock took on a client from the Irish mob. But that’s just the beginning. After being set up the DA, their client is killed by Frank Castle (aka The Punisher). In turn, Castle becomes their next client (despite Foggy’s protests) and he almost cooperated… until Fisk’s men got to him. But I’ll talk more about the Punisher’s story at a future time. Meanwhile Matt’s college girlfriend Elektra joined his vigilante crusade against “the Hand”… until she was killed by their ninjas. And then the Hand brings her back. What?!

The Defenders (Spring 2016)

So, as Matt is trying to leave Daredevil behind him, he’s practicing all by himself and trying to do that every day good guy thing. But the Hand makes its move and the earth starts to shake. He’s thrown together with the likes of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Danny Rand, trying to stop the Hand and a resurrected Elektra. As the Hand’s plans literally blow up in their faces, Daredevil dies in the rubble… oh so we’re led to believe. 

Daredevil Season 3 (Late 2017)

Just as Matt’s friends finish mourning his death, he shows up, having been nursed back to health by nuns (one in particular who turns out to be his mother). In his soul-searching, he tries to leave Matt Murdock behind and only be a vigilante. Take a wild guess how that worked out. Especially with Fisk working his way out of prison and a copy-cat Daredevil on his payroll. In the end, using evidence collected by Matt Murdock and friends, Daredevil gets Fisk to agree to go back to prison, to keep his new wife safe. (And yet he’s at large in Hawkeye, so maybe he changed his mind after the Snap?)

Spider-Man: No Way Home (Late 2024)

It’s left unclear, as of yet, whether Matt Murdock/Daredevil survived the Snap. But after the Blip, he’s able to get working again obviously. By the time Spider-Man’s identity was revealed to be Peter Parker, Matt has enough success to be the Parkers’ lawyer (unless that’s part of his pro bono work?). He only appears for one scene in No Way Home (two scenes in the extended version) just long enough to demonstrate his abilities. Just enough to raise some eyebrows if you never watched Daredevil.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (Summer 2025)

By this point, business is apparently pretty good. While still doing pro bono work, Matt admits to having some higher profile clients, including Luke Jacobson who, by that time, had made Matt a new superhero suit. In defending Luke in court (and subsequently from kidnapping) Matt meets and hooks up with Jen Walters/She-Hulk. He was headed back to New York, but that was before Jen did her little fourth-wall break. 

So that’s where that leaves us leading into Echo. There’s a distinct chance this Disney Plus series will show once and for all if the Netflix series are in continuity with the rest of the MCU. But even if this Matt Murdock isn’t the same as the Netflix Matt, that just puts the Netflix/Hulu series in a separate branch of the multiverse (I wonder what their nexus event was). For more about the multiverse, you can check out episode 5 of the LDS Geeks Podcast. Or you can just stay tuned for Echo in January. Between her being deaf and Native American, it should be an interesting story.

Our Christmas Traditions

Taking a break from the geeking and ranting, I wanted to take a moment and focus in on the holiday season. Every year I tell myself that I want to follow the Church's Light the World campaign, but every year the season seems to get away from me before I realize it. Despite my forgetfulness, I love that the Christmas season seems to bring out the Light of Christ in our souls. Whether it's service, gifting, or something else entirely, a mature understanding of Christmas gives us the opportunity to look outward and towards Jesus Christ. As such, I wanted to share some Christmas traditions our team practices (and/or practiced growing up) that have pointed us towards the Savior at this time of year.

I can't say I enjoyed this growing up in Canada, but for years my family participated in our stake Nativity Pageant. Underneath my shepherd's costume was my thick winter coat and gloves. Impossible to keep warm with so many layers. After our stake stopped doing our live nativity, another local stake still had theirs. And being able to come inside quickly after the performance made it so much more enjoyable. I'm glad the live nativity has a feeling of nostalgia now. Despite the cold, the repeated story engrained the Christ child's story in my brain and into my soul. Last year, a local stake here in Dallas had a live nativity. What a wonderful experience to share with my daughter and wife! And bonus points that we didn't have to triple-layer in winter clothes to go, just a light jacket (almost makes up for the dreadful Texas summer heat). Now I just need to find one we can go to this year. I hope to make it an annual tradition!

--Spencer

As a family that is forming Christmas traditions we wanted to do something different than what we were raised with. In 2016 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints started a program called Light the World and everyday there is something you can do. Like Spencer, I too am forgetful, but one tradition we do as a family is save enough money for the Light the World giving machines and buy a something that can help another family throughout the world. One of our favorite purchases is buying a goat. This year though I might persuade my children to buy S.T.E.M. Experience because I am part of S.T.E.M.

Another family tradition that my wife and I do is give our children three gifts. Each present represents a gift that Jesus Christ received from the wise men (gold, frankincense, and myrrh). Gold is valuable and can represents wealth and desire, so we give our kids something they want. Frankincense was used for perfume or incense that covers smell, so we interpret that as something the child needs (like socks! Haha JK). Lastly, myrrh was used for the temple where we can go to seek knowledge. Reading is great for our education, so we give our children a book.

—Michael

Growing up, my favorite tradition was updating the advent calendar every morning. My brother and I would race to be the one to move us closer to Christmas Day.

After I came home from my mission it became a tradition to listen to or watch the Grammy-Nominated Christmas concert MOTAB put on with Sissel Kyrkjebø. I had become obsessed with that soundtrack. Then found out that Chad had again, beaten me to it. He had heard Sissel perform live.

These days we have a few Christmas movies we watch every year, like Muppet Christmas Carol, and Home Alone. There are too many to list them all.

—Rob

While Christ is to be the center of Christmas, we focus on placing him at Christmas in how we speak to our kids about it. We make sure they understand the miracle of our Savior's birth. We remind them how our Heavenly Father gave us the Savior. That Jesus gave us his life and the atonement. No gift we can give will ever top those. But we also want our kids to see that the spirit of Christmas is giving. To put thought into what we do. And that doesn't mean the biggest, newest, or most expensive gift. There should be no contest at Christmas. We aren't competing. These are the things we try to get our children to understand about Christmas.

—TJ

Kingdom Hearts: Back Cover

 

The purpose of this post is to help you understand what happened during the events of Kingdom Hearts: Back Cover (KHBC). After I watched this movie I watched game plays of the story. Thank you damo279 for your help. I think I better understand the events that took place before the first keyblade war. For those of you that may not know before Sora was born there was a keyblade war and we see the remains of the battle in KH Birth by Sleep. This story is about the events that took place before it began. In this post I am going to explain the main storyline that will probably be important in the later games. 

In the movie there are seven characters that we should know about. One of them being the Master of Masters who chose six other masters (Ira, Ava, Invi, Aced, Gula, and Luxu) who he deemed worthy to be Masters. The Master of Masters wears Organization XIII robes and covers his face, so maybe it is a face we recognize. Each master was given a role from the Master of Masters. Five of the chosen are in charge of a different union, that should never be mixed together, and given the Book of Prophecies while the six, Luxu, who dresses like the Master of Masters didn’t get the book but gets the Gazing Eye Keyblade, the same keyblade that Xehanort uses (Which might be how Xehanort see's in the future or he has a copy of the Book of Prophecies) and a Black Box that he is never supposed to open. 

 

We don’t know what is in the box. Luxu asks what’s in the box, but the audience doesn’t know. He was surprised by the Master of Masters' answer. 

Luxu is also instructed to find a worthy keyblade wielder and pass the Gazing Eye Keyblade, that literally has the Master of Masters eye so he can see future generations and write it in the present in the book of prophecies.  He also creates a companion, Chirthy, for all keyblade wielders. I am not sure if this is important, but if it is at least I mentioned it. 

To note the Master of Masters knows the future and his goal is create a world where Darkness doesn’t exist. However, to get to the timeline The Keyblade War must happen. He accepts this for the future of the universe. 

 

He tells his students that there will be a Keyblade War and it is inevitable and that it will happen after he dies/disappears. Ira, one of the five given the role of leader, asks to bring members into the union and teach people to wield keyblades so they can defend themselves and possible evade the war. The Master of Masters agrees and the 5 masters have unions gain followers for each union. 

 

During the Master of Masters absence the masters start to believe that one of them is a traitor and like human nature they start pointing fingers with each other. Instead of being unified they divide and focus on benefiting their own union. Which eventually starts the keyblade war. 

While speculations on who the traitor occurs, Ava continues in her role to recruit keyblade wielders from different unions to the Dandelions, a group that will survive the Keyblade War. Five of the Dandelions were called to be union leaders like the current five masters and continue on raising new keyblade wielders so there is always light to fight against the darkness. 

When the Keyblade war finally occurs the Dandelions survive while the rest die out. What used to be one land divided into many worlds because of this war. The five masters die, I assume, with their union members. Their keyblades thrust into the ground from the fallen wielders, like an apocalypse. Their only space in this sacred land is in the shape of χ. This is where the finale for KH Birth by Sleep took place. 

Their is important information I probably skipped, but since I don't know what the future games have in store I am just telling what I think will be important for the future installments. So far, this games story as confused me the most, but I think I understand the lore to continue on. What Kingdom Hearts game got you lost the most? 

 

Community Christmas Episodes Ranked

MERRY HAPPY!!!

In preparing for this week’s podcast episode and this blog post, I ended up watching all four of the Community Christmas episodes. First time I’ve done it since randomly watching them a couple years ago, while catching up with a friend. So like I did with the Friends Thanksgiving episodes, here’s my ranking for Christmases at Greendale Community College.

4. Intro to Knots

I tried really hard to like this episode so that Season 4 didn’t end up at the bottom of my list. But despite the setting of the study group’s Christmas party, the politics involved in Cornwallis’s antics were distracting from any holiday mood or theme. It was like the episode with the purple pen, but with Christmas presents. Also, this one kind of triggers memories of Annie Edisons I knew in college who argued for 100% instead of being pleased with their 90% grade; who needs some useless PT school flashbacks?

3. Regional Holiday Music

I know this episode was meant to be cringy, but if it weren’t for the meh-ness of “Intro to Knots” I think this one would have been my last favorite Christmas episode. As it stands, this episode was just kind of weird, especially Annie's song (I know they were all supposed to appear brainwashed, but she just appeared stupid, to say the least). Maybe if I’d watched and/or made fun of Glee I’d have felt differently, but I just had a hard time with this one. That being said, this episode did give us a couple really good lines like “What are regionals? They’re this close!” And of course the classic meme fodder line, “Oh, Britta’s in this?”

2. Comparative Religion

This is where my ranking of Christmas episodes finally deviates from the season order. First off, I still enjoyed this episode (I previously wrote about it in 2019). While recording this week’s podcast episode, we kind of touched on why I love and hate this episode. Honestly, it all comes down to Shirley. Having been a missionary in the culturally diverse Canada Toronto Mission, and living in the equally diverse Dallas/Fort Worth area now, I’ve been exposed to other cultures and religions in a way that I’ve grown to love others’ traditions and even had some religious envy on how their beliefs function compared to stereotypical Christianity. So seeing Shirley judge her friends for how they treated “Christmas” (read: Shirley’s December 10th holiday party) really bugged me. If for no other reason, it bugged me that Shirley assumed her study group was full of Christians. I wouldn’t even assume that living in the south. 

1. Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas

TJ and I talked about this episode in depth during our recent podcast episode, as well as both of us writing about it previously (me in 2017 and TJ last year). But what I love about this episode is that it shows how Christmas can mean different things to different people. Yes, of course I believe in celebrating the birth of Christ at this time of year. However, Christmas has become more than a religious holiday, as it brings people together regardless of religious beliefs. As Abed articulated, “The meaning of Christmas is that Christmas has meaning.” In many ways, that’s even more appropriate, considering the Savior wasn’t born at the Winter Solstice (as Britta notes). We give this time of year meaning, whatever that meaning is, and I believe that brings the spirit of Christmas (the spirit of Christ) into our homes.

So if you’re only going to watch one Community Christmas episode, you have my preferences (in case you care, here’s TJ’s rankings: season 2, season 3, season 1, season 4). Until our next Community and/or Christmas themed content… CHRISTMAS PTERODACTYL!  

LDS Geeks Podcast #7: Christmas Episodes

Merry Christmas! We're excited to discuss some of our favorite Christmas episodes from television at this special time of year!

--Spencer