I confess, I left buying my advent candles to the last minute. New Year’s Eve, if you will. Both of the small Christian bookstores near us were sold out (not that they had many in the first place), so we had to drive into St. Louis this morning, to pick them up at the Catholic Supply Store (where they were even on sale!).

First, let me say I love Catholic stores. Yes, there are some things there that I find a little odd, but they also sell lots of really cool stuff. And this Catholic supply store reminds me so much of the store I used to go to as a child in my hometown–two-story set-up, Fontanini wall, (I love Fontanini nativity scenes!), banners in the back of the store–the whole thing is very reminiscent of what I remember from childhood. Not a bad place to do some shopping!

But, I was struck by several interesting things while I was in there. First, in the irony category–the Arch books spinner, and the large number of children’s story books published by CPH. There was something very amusing about seeing so many books from a Lutheran publisher in a Catholic store. It made me feel a little less out-of-place in there, that’s for sure!

I was also surprised to see that, while there were many CPH titles, there were very few (if any) books from other Protestant publishing houses. Of course, the main selection of books came from various Catholic publishers, (along with the small selection of CPH books), but no other Protestant titles? I found that to be somewhat telling. It’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of American Protestantism, especially all of the vapid books that are sold with a “Christian” label (Joel Osteen, anyone?), and it was nice to see that the Catholics seem to agree with me.

I definitely think I’ll be going back there in the future–I may be a Lutheran in a Catholic store, but I think I found enough common ground to make me feel like less of an imposter!