Forgive some jumping from topic to topic in this post, but it’s how my mind is working at the moment. It starts with the Google Phone, moves to Nicolas Kristof, and ends with Christmas. Here goes nothing.

Ok, so if you’ve seen the tech blogs, no scratch that, if you’ve seen any news lately you may have seen a story on the new Google phone. The crazy thing about this story is that no phone has been publicly launched. There’s no press releases or pretty pictures. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Google has given a phone to some of its employees to test out, and now there’s leaks all over the internet. The phone apparently has a name “Nexus One” and the hardware is manufactured by HTC. But then there’s all this speculation about whether it will be sold unlocked, and if so how much. And is Google getting into a business other than software. Yadda. Yadda.  Who knows?  I’ve seen the story on tech blogs, heard it on NPR, and read about it on Slate. I didn’t go looking for it, it just hit me three times in 24 hours. I’ll note again: Google hasn’t paid a dime for this advertising. All speculation.

Cut to NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. I heard a fascinating interview with him on NRP’s “On the Media” show in which Kristof talks about how he, as an advocacy journalist, frames issues.  He does so differently than he used to after researching some surprising recent studies.  Studies show that people are more moved and more likely to help one person in need than they are to respond to many people in need. In fact, we are much more likely to give money to an organization when we hear a plea to help one specific starving child, than we are to give if we hear this one child has a starving sibling as well. Kristof talks about how this makes his job as an advocacy journalist quite difficult, since he’s both trying to educate people about context and the scope of issues AND get them to do something about it. Kristof’s interview gets me thinking about PR and how bad most of us are at it.

Ok, now to Christmas. I wonder how, if at all, these two stories relate to the Christmas story. Here’s the thing. Christmas is sort of a big deal for Christians, it’s sort of about, um, God taking on flesh and becoming human and showing us the way to live only to die for just that. Without Christ, there’d be no Christians, no Christmas, no Santa.

But, unless I’m missing something, the Google phone is getting a helluva lot more news cycle time this week than Christmas and its celebration. Yeah, I know a google phone is pretty cool — I’d love to snag one — but it’s a phone. God coming in the flesh through the selflessness of a teenage peasant girl is even a bit more spiffy than an unlocked handset with Android software. But we Christians can’t seem to get the word out right. It’s not newsworthy. It’s not catchy. It’s not as revolutionary as a new phone. Or at least, that’s what our lives seem to communicate, and that’s what the press seems to cover (or not).

Sure, you can say it’s not all about news coverage time, the gospel isn’t about getting on TV or twitter. Sure. But all this makes me wonder, what’s going to make a bigger splash in the next few weeks: Google or the Christian church?