The return of December marks the season when many will observe Christmas with the trimming of a tree in their living room, the hanging of colourful lights around their homes, and the decorating of their life with the poor.  Let me explain what I mean.

In recent years a local business has contacted me to help them find a family who could use a helping hand at Christmas.  That sounds noble and innocent enough, but I have always steered these festive philanthropists to families in the community because I haven?t wanted to subject our own church attendees to their giving.  We, the church, help them ourselves anyway.

My concern about these holiday helpers is their motives.  Take, for example, one manager with whom I spoke mere hours before they imparted their gifts to the poor family I introduced them to.  This manager was telling me how she was going to go to the family?s home with age, gender, and size relative gifts for the children as well as . . .

A few months ago, our household experienced one of those weeks. After repeated troubleshooting on our 1992 minivan, it became clear that it was a whisker away from blowing a head gasket. Then, determined not to be left out, our 1989 K-Car became a 1989 not-so-OK-Car and threw a crankshaft rod bearing. Thankfully, into this mechanical horror show stepped a dear brother in Christ who not only volunteered to fix our van, but also gave me a rusty beater car he had been doing some patch up work on - a 1977 BMW 320i.

Receiving this gift car has taught me a couple of things, one of which is that no matter how old it is, or what shape it is in, most people think you have money when you drive a BMW. Image wise, I find this somewhat alarming and a little bit entertaining. Some have even compared me to . . .