And Christmas Day

I guess it was pretty good. It’s just strange, doing it with one less person.
We went to Christmas Eve service last night and I realized that except for a few years when someone was ill or the weather was really terrible, I’ve been to these services every year for 30 years now. This is my parents’ home church, more so than the one in Ohio- this is the longest they had lived anywhere even if I still kind of think of the Hudson congregation (which may no longer exist, even) as my “home church.”

It was different this year, like so many other things. I made it through without crying, but it was a near thing. I could hear my mom digging in her purse for a tissue and I didn’t dare look over at her because I knew if she was crying, I’d start.

I did make it through the candle lighting part - light is passed from the Christ candle at the front to each parishioner and we sing Silent Night while holding up our candle. In the past, if I was going to tear up, it would be here. But this year, I had a funny and possibly irreverent thought: that this was not unlike people at a heavy metal or hair-metal concert, when they go into the power ballad and everyone holds up their lighter.

This morning, we opened presents. Literally the only gifts she had to open came from me, so I’m glad I ordered that Stonewall Kitchen gift basket in addition to the other little things I gave her. I also realized a couple days ago that while she’d gotten candy for both of us, and stuff for my stocking, she didn’t have anything for herself...so I ran out to the Walgreens (the nearest place) and got a few little things (some Burt’s Bees stuff, and new gloves, and a couple other little things).

I think it was good. My brother does the weird thing - I don’t want to say it’s a power play, but it feels like it - of pressuring us to open our gifts on Thanksgiving while they keep theirs for today. (I’m sure it’s not intentional, but it can be a little literally thoughtless - in the sense of only considering what he (or his kid) wants, and not what might be best for others. Oh well.

And now it’s “over” because our culture had done Christmas for a month or more, and it seems like most want to push it aside and move on to New Year’s Eve or Valentines Day, when I would rather still observe Christmas until Epiphany.