Christmas Day

Fr Bishop celebrated a wonderful Christmas day Mass in the traditional Roman Rite at Santa Teresita Chapel. The choir outdid itself with excellent chant and polyphony accompanied all the way through by the chorus parvulorum, the treble rumble and roar provided by our indult Mass babies. You have to laugh at the know-all pontificators like the one recently in America magazine, a Fr. Thomas Something-or-other, who predicted that since our Mass is only for ancient fuddy-duddy nostalgics it will soon die out. Hah! Maybe twenty percent of our congregation is under five years of age. If it does disappear, it certainly won’t be for that reason.

Since it was a Saturday, I expected to be listening to the Met broadcast on the drive home. God help us: Janacek. What a din. The Met management must hate Christmas. I much preferred listening to the babies. If God had wanted me to listen to Janacek, He never would have made sure I had a cd of “King’s College Choir, Cambridge Singing 15 Favourite Carols” along in the car.

One of the odder plot devices in “A Christmas Story” invaded my real-life Christmas. (Or what passes for real life around here.) I spent at least a small portion of Christmas day in, would you believe, a Chinese restaurant. Nothing to do with the Bumpus's dogs, though. An elderly friend of mine wanted some Chinese take-away to tide him over until his son came to get him for Christmas dinner. So we drove all over creation until we found an open Chinese restaurant. They were happy to oblige him so there we sat. He didn't get either goose or duck, so there was no head to be whacked off. No one sang "Deck the Harls With Boughs of Holry" either but I may have been wished "Happy Horidays".

Beannachtai na Nollaig a dhuibh!