What happened to huppeling?

Is there a Biblical or theological ‘view’ of play? I think not. Examples come to mind: God’s creation of the platypus, for example, or the kangaroo, or the echidna (God seemed to fool around with Australia an awful lot).

The Bible does speak about creation and recreation (as in re-creation). This is tied to the nature of Sabbath. The old debates about whether you should enroll your child in a Sunday-playing soccer club had some value, but nothing prescriptive is suggested per se in the Bible about this. A person from my home town turned down a minor league offer because it would involve playing professionally on Sunday. May Christians play professional sports on the day of rest? The answer is moot. Everyone does it from Bart Starr of the famous Green Bay Packers to Trevor [van der] Linden, to Dan Hamhuis (a former student from Smithers).

Is competitive sport – snowboarding, skate-boarding, futbol (soccer), football, hockey, even play at all? I remember when Wayne Gretzky seemed to be having a whale of a time with Jari Kurri and Mark Messier. The element of play is there, but to me it seems to take second place to competitive advantage and fame.

Competition has affected me in activities like bird watching (‘wanna see my life list’) to fishing (‘a new world record’) to hunting (‘eight ducks with eight shells’). I had to seriously curtail my practice of keeping track of things.

While children play

Dr. Seerveld versified part of Zechariah 3, about a coming time of complete shalom (second verse of the hymn): “My remnant will believe with wonder – while boys and girls in the streets are playing.” This is from the grey Psalter Hymnal, #205. This lyric is profound in its Biblical insight and suggests something about the essential naiveté of play. (A pox on all the hymnals that did not include it, including Lift Up Your Hearts on which I worked.)

My own feelings about play as a serious business would be described in II Samuel 6 in which David dances before the ark and is soundly rebuked by his wife for his undignified actions. I don’t speak Dutch but I think David’s ‘dancing’ would be translated as huppelen, ‘to hop, skip, be frisky, cavort.’

I once had an educational consulting business that I called Huppelen Productions. Most of the people who encountered the title questioned what it meant and then said, “how cute.”

Play, to me, is a deadly serious matter of seeing and doing things in a tentative, quiet, noisy, humble, celebrative, non-self-conscious way. It won’t always make you friends if you play at things. As the introduction to This Hour Has Twenty-Two Minutes used to say: “Some viewers may not share this sense of humour.” Some Christians do not appreciate huppeling in school or church. May they all be forgiven.