The Holly Spirit

In our Sophomore Western Culture classes we talked about American holidays. We even reserved an entire class period to talk about Christmas. Classes are two hours long so the first hour was the Christian Christmas story (where we read and summarized parts of Matthew and Luke) and the second hour was about the secular American Christmas.

During review week we played Christmas Pictionary. A student would draw a random Christmas word or event from a bag and then sketch it on the chalkboard for the class to guess. One student drew the word "holly." I asked her if she remembered what it was, and she confidently said yes. Then she stepped up to the chalkboard and sketched a pregnant woman with lines for wind running across her belly. I was baffled. This image looked nothing like "holly." I whispered in her ear, "What did you think the word was?" and she said "the holy spirit . . . that came upon Mary and made her pregnant."

Wow. What an awesome mistake. She had forgotten all about holly, but had remembered the importance of the Holy Spirit in the Christmas story. I could not have been more pleased.