My Christmas by Julie D.

FIRST THINGS FIRST
The church looked gorgeous and really reflected the joyous celebration. We always attend Christmas Day mass. Not only does that make the day itself special but we have learned to avoid those Christmas Eve "crushes" I've seen other St. Blog's folks complaining about (it took a few years of suffering because the girls sang in a children's choir on Christmas Eve before we could get away from those crowds).

UNDER THE TREE
Santa was very good to the Glad Gastronome. I also got many things from my Amazon wish list including Michael (love John Travolta's turn in that movie), The Anvil of the World (some great fantasy s-f by one of my favorite authors), and Thinklers! (I've gotta get material for the weekend puzzlers somhow!). The biggest and most surprising gift was from Tom; a one year subscription to NPR's "Wait, Wait" and "Car Talk" that I can download into my iPod weekly. Woohoo! No more trying to remember to be home to tape it! What a great idea!

Also, this wasn't really "under the tree" as I had pre-ordered it many months ago, but Amazon got The Simpson's 5th season DVD (released on 12/22) to us in one day and it was a great festive start to the holidays. There's no better way to get the excitement level going than watching "forgotten" or little seen episodes of The Simpsons in their prime.

COOL STUFF OTHERS GOT

• Tom: Postcards from the Boys by Ringo Starr. I never knew that whenever any of the Beatles went anywhere they'd mail postcards to Ringo but here they are collected in this book with Ringo's commentary.


• Rose: a very cool hat from Urban Outfitters. She always looks fab in hats and this one sets off her looks just perfectly. (Although I also liked her Muse cd a lot more than I thought I would have ... to the point of needing it on my iPod.)


• Hannah: a toad house. This summer we had a toad living in the bottom of our Earth Box. I didn't even know we had toads in our yard. She is very into nature and this was perfect for her.

WHAT I LEARNED

• Tom has a real liking for red ribbon ... a REAL LIKING! Practically every package he wrapped had red ribbon all over it.


• Two graphics people wrapping gifts spend too much time making sure the "color blend" doesn't have too much of one color or another (and why did I wind up with so much blue paper I wonder? never again!).


• Around St. Blog's people wrote about buying tons of gifts or limiting gifts to a few to better keep their focus on the season. Here's our philosophy, which I found echoed in an interview by Paul McCartney of all people. We don't buy things for the girls the rest of the year but for Christmas and their birthdays we go all out ... or as all out as we can afford at the time. It is a time of generous celebration and the more the better. We have never had a problem remembering that Jesus is the center of everything ... I think that is more of a family focus than a function of how many gifts are given. After all, I always remember that Jesus gave the village in Cana so much wine the entire village was blasted for three days so who am I do pull back in gift giving?


• Tom's relatives, who we spent Christmas Eve with, tended to be about half Catholic and the other half are either evangelical or Methodist. Occasionally the Catholics would talk about which mass they would attend. Suddenly Tom's Methodist sister-in-law broke into an explanation of why they weren't going to attend any Christmas services at all. It seems the minister whose sermons they enjoy was doing all the services that conflicted with the family's schedule. The services that would have been easy to attend featured a minister whose speaking style is not as good. I know this is not how many Protestants are, simply because of my blogging friends, if for no other reason. However, it stood to point out to us that the Eucharist is the heart of any Catholic mass. That is the point of having all those mass times available. Whether the homily (sermon) will be good is really besides the point. You might internally cheer or sigh when you see who stands up to speak but whatever. As long as you get the Eucharist it's all good.


• I didn't realize how upset our priest was by the low attendance figures this Sunday. For one thing we were moving pretty slowly and wound up at the 12:30 mass which is usually sparsely attended. It was only when talking with Fr. L. afterwards that we realized how many more usually would have been there ... and this was with the vigil masses not held on Christmas evening. He always is cheerful but made some very pointed comments about how many parishioners he wondered were out at the malls at that very time. We're such terrible consumers that we'd forgotten all about the after-Christmas sales ... so we dropped everything and ran right out of the church (just kidding).