I hate to be dramatic, but I’m pretty sure that shower tried to murder me.

It didn’t look that scary from the outside. It was pastel tiled and simply designed. The family who owned it had invited me to live with them for a few weeks while I studied Spanish in Costa Rica during college. They had a modest house outside of San Jose and all was perfectly peaceful until the first morning I took a shower.

In this section of Costa Rica, and perhaps other parts of Latin America, they did not have hot water heaters. In order to get warm water, you had to first turn on the metal showerhead. Then, once the water was on, you flipped a big breaker box that sparked and hissed, sending an electrical current into the pipe, thus warming the water.

This act broke every rule of electricity I had ever learned in shop class as a young lad. Let’s go over the process once more:

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I wasn’t going to write about this one. The Christmas season was going to come and go and I wasn’t even going to touch it. Like every fraternity at Samford University’s view of Freshman Jon Acuff, I was going to reject this.

Until I saw the billboard.

Sunday night, driving home from vacation with my family outside of Atlanta, GA, I saw a new billboard.

On a background of festive red, with big white letters I read a simple message:

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Wow, just wow.

A few weeks ago, my four-year-old McRae and I were talking about God. We tend to have some fairly heated theological conversations because she’s Dutch Reform and I’m not. After discussing a few of the many things that make God awesome (He loves us, He gives us sunny days, etc.) McRae turned to me and with all the seriousness that a child can muster said, “God sure made Santa special.”

What am I supposed to do with that?

You have to admit, she has a point. Unless her father is a liar, then Santa is pretty special. Because based on what I’ve told her, he is able to deliver toys and treats to every person on the planet in one night. And he has reindeer that can fly. And he is some kind of omniscient because he knows if you’ve been good or bad. And to top it all off, he controls an army of little green elves who apparently love working nonstop in the North Pole.

But, as a Christian, where does Santa fall into our discussions of Christmas? I think we have 3 possible approaches:

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