The End of the World Should Involve Bacon

The end of the world, should it come Dec. 21 or a hundred million years from now, won't be pretty.

How do I know? I've seen it--or rather, various Hollywood incarnations of it. From 2012 to Knowing to The Cabin in the Woods, the end invariably involves lots of screaming and explosions and impressive CGI affects. Sure, Danny Glover or Nicholas Cage will put on a brave face and make a nice speech somewhere along the line, but we know they're probably pretty bummed.

And I can understand why. Regardless of where we think we'll wind up after everything's gone, most of us have gotten kind of attached to this place. Even if the streets weren't filled with molten lava or shambling zombies, it'd be hard to say goodbye to it all. I'd be particularly disappointed should the doomsday-ists be right and the earth does fold up shop tomorrow. I mean, the Denver Broncos have been having a great year. If the world has to end, couldn't it just wait until after the playoffs?

Still, I'd hope that I'd not waste those last few hours feeling sorry for myself. If I knew that Dec. 21--just a couple of hours from when I'm writing this--was the last good day we'd have with this ol' earth, here's what I'd do:

I'd wake up early and cook a pound of bacon. And then I'd eat it all myself. I know that sounds selfish, but listen, I really like bacon. And if my family wants some, they're more than welcome to cook their own pound.

I might pick up some chocolate donuts, too.

I'm scheduled to see and review a movie tomorrow, but I think I'd blow it off. I don't really want to spend a couple of my last precious hours watching Jack Reacher.

Instead, I think I'd take a nice walk around town with my wife. Maybe we'd take our dog. We don't walk him enough. He's pretty annoying to walk, to be honest: He's like that Joe Pesci character from Goodfellas--making a big show of how tough he is by barking at everything, from squirrels to mountain lions to passing SUVs. But, with it being the end of the world, I figure he might as well spend the day enjoying it, too. Plus, he just might frighten away an invading alien or two.

I'd try to call family and friends, of course. I'd visit with my parents, who live in town. I might touch base with my friend Clay Morgan, particularly if we see any zombies shambling around the neighborhood. Clay wrote an awesome, off-kilter Christian book about the undead (called, strangely enough, Undead), and he might be able to give me a tip or two on how to deal with the decaying army.

I might watch 2001: A Space Odyssey again, giving that gigantic floating fetus one more chance to make some sense. Or maybe my kids and I would just soak in a few episodes of The Tick (greatest cartoon ever), particularly the one with the Breadmaster.

If the roads aren't too overloaded with abandoned cars and such, I might try to talk the fam into heading up to the mountains to sled. I can't think of anything more fun than sledding, really, and even though my kids are grown and I'm--well, grown too, does anyone really ever outgrow sledding?

I might do some other things, too, if we have time. My daughter's always wanted to order a pie at Village Inn while all of us wear fake mustaches. I'd listen to some of that music my son's been bugging me to hear. Maybe I'll finish off the day by taking my wife dancing. We haven't been dancing in ages.

Funny. The last day on earth, and what would I spend it doing? Simple things. Things I could do any ol' time but often don't. It wouldn't be filled with maxed-out credit cards or drunken revelries: It'd be spent sledding. Dancing. Walking. Hopefully, laughing. It makes me wonder ... if those are the sorts of activities that I truly love--love enough to spend my last day on earth doing--why don't I do them more often? Why do I spend an inordinate amount of my time doing things that I don't necessarily enjoy and, in the grand scheme of things, don't necessarily matter?

Jesus wanted us to live in the moment. Matthew 6 practically exhorts us to wear fake mustaches to order pies whenever we want. "Do not worry about tomorrow," He says, "for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Maybe on Saturday, Dec. 22, my daughter and I can order pies. My son and I can listen to some music. Who knows? Maybe my wife and I will even go dancing.

But not tomorrow. My editor would kill me if I didn't see Jack Reacher.

Is it the End? Or a New Beginning?

When I was a kid, I loved The Dark Crystal, a movie made by Jim Henson and filled with some pretty fabulous puppets. It’s a story about two elf-like creatures (called gelflings, if you must know) who must evade creepy buzzard-like creatures and battle gigantic beetles and, eventually, save their entire land. These gentle creatures turn out to be big players, cosmically speaking, and it’s no coincidence that they’ve made their presence known during something called the Great Conjunction.

“The Great Conjunction is the end of the world!” proclaims a weird womanish creature named Aughra. “Or the beginning.”

There are those who think we’re on the brink of the end of the world around here, and we we’re without a single gelfling. The long-count Mayan calendar is set to end Dec. 21, which has sent loads of New Age-y true believers running for the hills—in some cases literally. Some wanted to head to the French village of Bugarach, believing that the tiny town might be spared because of the cool mountain nearby. (The town said thanks, but commemorate the end of the world elsewhere.) Another mountain, Mt. Rtanj in Serbia, is also rumored to be a safe apocalyptic harbor. Living in Colorado Springs, I’m surprised we haven’t seen a surge of folks setting up shop on the slopes of Pikes Peak.

Experts say the only real “end” the Mayans were fortelling is the end of the calendar: Time to go to Hallmark and pick up another one.

But let me admit something to you. While I don’t believe the world will stop turning Dec. 21, there have been times when it’s felt like the end of the world.

The Newtown massacre hit lots of us pretty hard, and I think we might be excused for feeling, in the wake of the tragedy, that our culture was going a little wrong. There have been seven mass killings in 2012: Seven too many. It can feel as though we’re unsafe no matter where we go or what we do. A sick, unstable person has the power to take what’s most precious to us and tear our worlds apart.

We’re struggling with other issues, too. The Fiscal Cliff. Climate change. Uprisings in the Middle East. Economic strife in Europe. It’s hard to be a glass-half-full sort of person when the glass seems full of holes.

There’s a reason why the Mayans pegged Dec. 21 as the day their calendar ended. It’s the winter solstice—a natural completion of a year and the shortest, darkest day of the year. It was a time when the land was at its bleakest and gloomiest. Perhaps those not familiar with the cyclical nature of the seasons might wonder whether things would ever get better. The solstice was, in many cultures, a time of celebration—a seasonal understanding that, yeah, things may look pretty black now, but they’re bound to get brighter; bound to get better.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why the Christian Church chose to celebrate Christ’s birth on Dec 25, so very close to the solstice (most scholars seem to think Jesus was probably born in the spring or fall), and why lights—from advent candles to LED displays—are such integral parts of celebrating Christmas.

Really, what better time is there to celebrate the arrival of the world’s only true light, only true hope, but in the darkest part of the year?

Things may look pretty bleak right now. The world feels dark and cold. I feel the chill everywhere. But as Christmas itself tells us, sometimes the darkest of times can bring life to the brightest of hopes. And though it may feel like the end of the world, it might be just a new beginning.