24 DEC 11

"All is calm..."

Saturday night.
A Christmas Eve...
and all is quiet.
The day was bright and cool...
near chilly.

The Giants won NYC bragging rights,
beating the Jets 29-14 in the pro game
played today.

My wife and I puttered around the house.
She prepared a dish for tomorrow's dinner
at her daughter's home in Connecticut.
________________________________

Passing strange... though I now profess to be agnostic,
I was reared Catholic and the one thing I find
myself missing on Christmas Eve is attending
midnight mass with my mother.

As a kid, I used to love the look and smell
of the decorated church...
fir boughs and beeswax,
festive red ribbons, green wreaths...
a flood of poinsettias.
There was that gut-shaking rumble
of the pipe organ...
the soaring voices of the full choir...
the priestly vestments...
that satiny sheen, white and gold.
I loved the spectacle of it all.
The full Roman Catholic High Mass...
celebrated in Latin.

But most of all, I appreciated being treated as
being adult enough to attend the midnight ritual.

Merry Christmas to all.

                                              ( Kyrie eleison )

-Fini

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