Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas!

I was confused this morning when Mary came downstairs, plunked into a chair, and didn't want to go wake Daddy and John to open stockings. After I questioned her a bit, I asked her if she wanted to go back to sleep: she said 'yes,' so I put a blanket over her and she slept another half hour.

Then she woke and asked for oatmeal, still not wanting to open her stocking. So she sat and ate while the rest of us opened our stockings.

When she slept through Mass (and the brass band!)--which she doesn't ever do, and this was a later Mass than we normally attend--I was really quite worried that she was fast becoming ill. Relief swept over me when Chris was carrying a groggy Mary out after Mass and the girl began shrieking with joy at seeing doughnuts. She was perfectly well.

I include this photo taken after Mass to show the scale of our new saints statues.

Speaking of saints, I was tickled with our priest's homily today. He began by talking about the new statues, which most of us were seeing for the first time that day. I thought to myself, "There is no way that Fr. R--- is going to miss an opportunity of talking to C&E Catholics without presenting the Gospel. How is he going to move from statues to the plan of salvation?"

For those who enjoy the art of a well-written homily, my summary of his 20-minute delivery was that the statues represent the invisible (cloud of witnesses around us always) made visible (in the form of statues to remind us of these edifying Christians gone before us). And today we celebrate the invisible God (the Father) made visible in the birth of Jesus Christ: God incarnate (in-fleshed). And why did God incarnate himself as a baby? Because of our Original Sin (which Father weaved in beautifully), which is why we require a Savior, and (drum roll, please) therefore it is important to come back into the Church, go to sacramental Confession, in order to join the saints one day in Heaven--bringing us full circle back to those statues. It was masterfully done. And not to rely only his exceptional homily, Father R--- handed out gifts of CDs wrapped in jaunty bows, so that each person attending Christmas Mass took home a talk on the meaning of the Mass and on Confession. Well done, Father!

I am blessed beyond measure! My cup runneth over. 

I was actually rather tearful during Mass because I kept thinking about our human mortality: that we need to embrace these special days, and also the mundane days, because we never know when this will be our last or the last one with someone we love.

After Mass, we came home and enjoyed a special breakfast: cinnamon rolls, toast, fried eggs, bacon, strawberries, and clementine oranges.

We didn't begin opening presents until around 11:30 and we were so pleased to see that the children know no different. They don't know that "Christmas lists" exist and they don't know that kids tell their parents gifts that they want. They do know that we are celebrating Jesus' birthday, so we go to Mass first--like going to the person's birthday party--open gifts in His honor second. They were quite docile about waiting to open gifts and I was so pleased, knowing it will probably be a lesson taught many times, in many ways, to many different ages of our kids, and might not always go as easily as it did this year.

It was an athletic event to keep Margaret from eating all the gifts. She can crawl fast like lightening now!

Stopping amidst the chaos to read a book quietly

You know you're a Catholic when . . . your Catholic friend decorates your gift with a sticker of a saint being brutally martyred by arrows and you receive it and think that is a perfectly normal decoration.

Some people know me very well!

Our main gift to the children (and some relatives went in on the gift with us) were these maple wood blocks. We were so pleased to see how the children instantly gravitated to these simple, timeless toys. They spent the rest of the afternoon building castles and battle machinery with this wood.

I took this picture as I was putting away the gifts because it struck me as so humorous: You know you're a family of bookworms when you receive this many books at Christmas in contrast to one toy, I think, that uses any electricity at all.

The dinner menu was: pork chops with cinnamon apples and sauerkraut (chickpea patty for me, good ol' mac & cheese for John), puree of potato and leek soup, and roasted winter vegetables, with gingerbread cookies for dessert.

We had a beautiful and truly merry day. As we tucked in the getting-wild and exhausted children at a very early bedtime, Mary asked me, "Can we have another Merry Christmas tomorrow?"