Hello, Miss Penni!!!
You will probably be very pleased to know that I sat through a Catholic Christmas mass and lived to tell the tale, as did the parishoners!!! I did not actually sing the carols, since they were religious, but I stood up whenever it was appropriate, listened respectfully to Silent Night without any tooth-breaking on either side, and refrained from screaming out, "No,no, you are SO wrong, He was born in the spring!!!", when the priest kept talking about how it was Christ's birthday.
I found the whole thing frankly depressing, because of references like Christ's ARMIES in Heaven, and the general somber atmosphere. However, I must say in all fairness that I ended up not at the rock and roll mass, which I would have enjoyed more, but at an earlier one, because it was my husband's fervent desire to expose our little family to five hours of Sister Wendy's art history, a truly bizarre way to spend Christmas day, and an exercise in high culture which resulted in a fevered argument over dinner, since I believe that Jackson Pollack is a total rip-off artist, just splashing paint from large industrial-sized cans with wooden house paint stirrers in a drunken stupor while chain smoking, and my husband thinks he is PROFOUND, Someone's gift to modernism.
In any event, I shook a priest's hand after the ordeal--I hope it doesn't fall off or anything. Who really knows the full power of paganism, anyway? My brother, who thinks he has a good sense of humor, remarked that it had been a LONG time since I had been seen in a place of worship, and that it was incredible that the seat was not SMOKING after I got up.
I hope you and your family have wonderful love and peace in the new year, Miss Penni!!!!! |
