{"id":18560,"date":"2016-12-12T18:40:30","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T18:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18560"},"modified":"2016-12-12T18:40:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T18:40:30","slug":"no-santa-claus-are-you-kidding-pastor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18560","title":{"rendered":"No Santa Claus? Are you kidding, &#8216;pastor&#8217;?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>To be brutally honest, I hardly ever give this guy a passing thought.<\/p>\n<p>However, he has thrust himself into the news yet again. David Grisham, the Repent Amarillo &#8220;pastor&#8221; who likes calling attention to himself, has done so in splendid fashion.<\/p>\n<p>He went to Westgate Mall this past Saturday, according to the Dallas Morning News, and berated children waiting to sit on Santa&#8217;s lap. Santa Claus &#8220;doesn&#8217;t exist!&#8221; he told the children and their parents.<\/p>\n<p>Really, &#8220;pastor&#8221;? Not in anyone&#8217;s heart? Not in their imagination?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, no. This guy wants Christmas to be strictly, solely, exclusively about celebrating Jesus Christ&#8217;s birth. Hasn&#8217;t anyone ever informed this fellow that one can do both? I&#8217;m going to presume for a moment that when he was a child he got to sit on Santa&#8217;s lap and tell the Jolly Old Man what he wanted for Christmas.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/texas\/2016\/12\/12\/santa-claus-exist-texas-pastor-heckles-children-parents-waiting-meet-santa-mall\">http:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/texas\/2016\/12\/12\/santa-claus-exist-texas-pastor-heckles-children-parents-waiting-meet-santa-mall<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As the Morning News article points out, Grisham has paraded himself in front of the media before. He once tried to launch a boycott against the city of Houston because voters there elected an openly gay mayor, Annise Parker; he also sought to burn a Quran, but had the copy of the Islamic holy book taken from him at the last minute at Sam Houston Park in Amarillo by a skateboarder.<\/p>\n<p>No Santa Claus, eh?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/xExhibits_Online_YesVirginia_G4031-150x150.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.qYopkFOgCC.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-18561\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/xExhibits_Online_YesVirginia_G4031-150x150.jpg.pagespeed.ic_.qYopkFOgCC.jpg\" alt=\"xexhibits_online_yesvirginia_g4031-150x150-jpg-pagespeed-ic-qyopkfogcc\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Well, now is a good time to bring back the classic essay that dispels for all time the no-Santa farce. Perhaps you&#8217;ve heard of the piece that was written by Francis Pharcellus Church. It was published on Sept. 21, 1897 in the New York Sun.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newseum.org\/exhibits\/online\/yes-virginia\/\">http:\/\/www.newseum.org\/exhibits\/online\/yes-virginia\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.newseum.org\/exhibits\/online\/yes-virginia\/<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Take that, &#8220;Pastor&#8221; Grisham!<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Blogger&#8217;s Note<\/strong>: I refuse to refer to David Grisham as a pastor without putting quote marks around the word, as in &#8220;pastor.&#8221; To my way of thinking and to my understanding of the Bible, he is nothing of the sort.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To be brutally honest, I hardly ever give this guy a passing thought. However, he has thrust himself into the news yet again. David Grisham, the Repent Amarillo &#8220;pastor&#8221; who likes calling attention to himself, has done so in splendid fashion. He went to Westgate Mall this past Saturday, according to the Dallas Morning News, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18560\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No Santa Claus? Are you kidding, &#8216;pastor&#8217;?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[978,6744,6745,6743,4112],"class_list":["post-18560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-religious-news","tag-christmas","tag-david-grisham","tag-francis-pharcellus-church","tag-repent-amarillo","tag-santa-claus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18562,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18560\/revisions\/18562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}