Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot...

Hello, Mein Followers!

 

I hope you all had a beautimous and frabjous Christmas. Ours was sublime. Did you know that there was a full moon on Christmas?

 I made a wish, of course. You wanna know what I wished?

Oh, come on, you know I'm not telling. That's how wishes DON'T come true!

But we had a gorgeous Christmas. I was actually feeling *good* on Christmas, which was a big thing for me. I've been sick for something like two months now. I was sick when I went to Carmel early in November, with a horrid chest cold that kept me up at night coughing. That switched to a horrid head cold early in December, wherein my ears were SO FULL they were so sensitive, and my voice had no depth. (That, by the way, is when we recorded that 25-minute Christmas music video posted earlier on my blog - hence the reason for the slightly whispery/reedy quality to our voices.) So Christmas, I actually felt GOOD. I could SING, which I could not do for Midnight Mass. (My voice kept cracking then. Imagine how cute our Christmas carols sounded.) And Christmas morning, we had our beautiful sausages on sweet rolls with orange juice for the littlies and mimosa for the not-so-littlies, opened our stockings and what-all, sang JOY TO THE WORLD after mein papa lit the Christ Candle, and then opened pressies! There were a bunch of us - fourteen opening presents in the morning, and then a total of nineteen at the table for our gnocchi dinner. We watched Rise Of The Guardians after dinner and had dessert, and I wished on the full moon.

Anyway, what are your plans for the New Year? Me, I'm going to spend it in. I may have a shot of honey whiskey, shared with my besties, Stoick, Chrysophylax Dives, and Amalthea. We are pretty tight, the four of us. I will prolly watch Person Of Interest, so I can be sure to stay awake until midnight. I don't usually have too much trouble doing that. I'm a night owl anyway.

Left to right: Chrysofylax Dives (green), Stoick (red) Amalthea (unicorn)

And that was our Christmas, and I just wanted to wish you all a holy, happy, blessed New Year. I hope you enjoy this little song. I have a sister who knows Eleven is MY Doctor, and will send me all kinds of things Eleven related. I happened to love this song in the Christmas special, and this priest actually has a wicked good voice. I hope you enjoy it!

GOD BLESS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Le Cat

 

Feast of St. Nicholas

Today is the feast of St. Nicholas!

The tradition of leaving one's shoes out for St. Nicholas to fill on December 6th stems from a tale about a poor man who had three daughters. Since this man could not afford dowries for his daughters, they would have had to be sold into slavery. But during the night, St. Nicholas paid the house a secret visit, and the man woke to find coins in his shoes. This happened three times, providing the man with the needed dowry for his daughters, and they were spared from slavery. (Read more about St. Nicholas here and here.)

In my family, we celebrate St. Nicholas Day by leaving shoes out the night before, and waking to see what presents St. Nicholas has left in our shoes. It is a nice, anticipatory feast during Advent, and we look forward to it every year.

Now, since I'm a little under the weather with a head cold and I can't think of words to write an actual blog post, I'm going to post a Christmas story instead, one I wrote awhile back and never subbed because, honestly, it's not really publishable. Here you go!

CHRISTMAS IS:

CHRISTMAS IN FIVE SENSES

She tasted Christmas, in the sweetness of a sugar cookie. She sneaked icing, dough, and chocolate and let it all mix on her tongue. She decided, Christmas is hot cocoa and whipped cream stirred with a peppermint stick. Christmas is the taste of cold snow on her lips.

She smelled Christmas, the butter, sugar, and flour mixed in a bowl, cookies baking in the oven, and the clear, sharp smell of snow. She said, “Christmas is the smell of the pine tree in the corner, the aroma of lighted Advent candles, and the clean snowy breeze coming through that opened window.”

She felt Christmas, the cookie dough under her fingernails. She poked her palms on prickling pine needles, and fingered the rough, glitter-crusted lining on an ornament. Christmas, she thought, is the touch of snowflakes on my face, paint on my fingers as I help paint this nativity scene on the frozen windowpane. Christmas is the warmth of fire thawing my numb fingers, the touch of the chiseled, porcelain statues of St. Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, the sheep, and donkey, in my hands.

She heard Christmas, the crackle of wrapping paper as someone wrapped a present, followed by the snick of tape cut off a spool. She heard the clink of cookie cutters clattering on the counter. Christmas is "Silent Night” playing on the radio, a timer going off on the stove, a spoon racketing off the ceramic side of a mixing bowl. Christmas is the sound of wind blowing past the window and rattling the sills, of flames crackling on the hearth. Christmas is the sound of a teakettle whistling on the stove, ready to prepare a pot of hot chocolate. Christmas is the silence in the evening when the world goes still.

She saw Christmas. There was the decorated tree standing in the corner, lights blinking on and off on pine boughs and gleaming off the silver, blue, and red ornaments. She saw the Nativity scene painted on the windows, the Advent wreath wrapped in green ivy and red beads on the table. She decided  Christmas is red and green garland strung in the entryway between the kitchen and living room, Christmas cards displayed on the decorated tree, snow piling in mounds in the yard, and snowflakes filling the sky with a kaleidoscope of diamond glints. Christmas was the snowmen standing in every yard, white lights illuminating houses on the block, Santa Claus’s ringing bells at every store.

She lived Christmas. Christmas is the glory of Midnight Mass, the candles and bells rejoicing Christ’s birth. Christmas is a drive home through a silent night, a stop at a gas station for coffee and a chocolate bar. Christmas is a couple hours’ sleep, an early morning vigil, huddled in blankets on the couch, excited gazes fixed upon a mound of presents beneath pine boughs.

Christmas is the lighted white Christ Candle, “Adeste Fidelis” sung around the Advent wreath, the Christ Child laid in His manger. Christmas is sausage and buns, orange juice, and chocolate. Christmas is a noise and fury, and joy. Christmas is digging through Christmas stockings, the excitement of opening the first present.

Christmas is the Babe in the manger.

Christmas is Christ’s birth.

God bless!

Cat

Happy New Year!

First off, Merry Christmas to all!  I do hope you all had a beautiful and wonderful Christmas Day.

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Merry Christmas!!!!

Mine was just the best.  I feel like my family celebrates the best Christmas.  (No, I'm not prejudiced. Not at all!  ;-)

We had Midnight Mass at our house, and we (the girls) sang all the Propers of Mass XVI, which is the Iesu Redemptor Mass.  It was really quite lovely and I think we did a pretty good job, though ONE sister (I shan't mention any names) sang a part of the Sanctus quite incorrectly and quite in my ear, so there was a faltering moment where the Sanctus was WRONG until we managed to get back on track.  Other than that, all went well and we sang some lovely Christmas carols as well, like In The Bleak Midwinter and Angels We Have Heard on High.

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Once Mass was over and all the parishioners that had come to it had gone home, we put the wee ones to bed.  Then, the grownups - or grownuppish ones - put out all the pressies under the tree and laid out stockings for Santa to fill (which he did AFTER the grownups went to bed!) and left a little plate of cookies and a glass of milk out for him to snack on once he'd finished all his heavy lifting.

We went to bed around 3 a.m.

Around about 5:15 a.m. I was woken  by the sounds of wee voices in the living room.  I was determined to get more than 2.25 hours of sleep so I shut my eyes, but unfortunately I'm that Christmas kind of person that cannot get back to sleep once waking on Christmas Morning.  So after a struggle of fifteen minutes I got up and joined the merry throng on the couches and we watched the Christmas tree flicker with its lights and commented on how many pressies Santa had left!

Once everyone in the house had wakened - about 6 a.m., I think it was - my dad and brother started cooking the Italian sausages, both hot and mild, and warming up sweet buns in the oven.  We made coffee and drank bucketloads of coffee while waiting for the first sausages to become available, and made up orange juice so we could have orange juice for the littlies and mimosa for the adults.  (I'd bought champagne a few days earlier.)  We munched on our sausage rolls, went and lit the Christ Candle and sang Joy to the World and put the Baby in the Manger, then we opened stockings.  THAT was fun.  But then all the little ones got down and dirty with the pressies, and that was even MORE fun!  (We made sure to pull out the ones to save for Epiphany first, before we got TOO crazy with the presents.)

Christ Candle

For a couple hours it was mayhem, watching people open boxes, opening your own boxes, throwing out wrapping paper, etc.  All was madness and merriment, while we ate sausage rolls and drank mimosa and coffee and ooooohed and aaaaaahhhed over everyone's gifties.  It was jolly!  Then, of course, we had a nice long day where we could read, catch up on sleep, get pretty, and then we had dinner of gnocchi and ham with a to-die-for meat sauce and all the trimmings of vegetables and salad. (Food is a BIG DEAL in our house!)  It was really a lovely, lovely day.

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Now, of course, it is New Year's Day.  Last night we all stayed up - or at least, the grownuppish ones of us stayed up - and we watched Flashpoint to keep ourselves awake til midnight.  At midnight, Amanda and Maria both opened their bottles of whiskey that they had gotten for Christmas and we toasted in the New Year with shots all 'round.  (That's how we celebrate.  We don't exactly go "hog wild" when we party.)

Now we have the Epiphany to look forward to.  That is the official Twelfth Day of Christmas.  Most people do it backwards, counting from the 13th of December to Christmas.  Actually, the twelve days of Christmas START on Christmas Day and ends on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, the day the Wise Men brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Child Jesus.  I love that we celebrate the Epiphany in our family.  It extends Christmas and makes the entire season that much better.

The Three Wise Men

We are going to be having a delicious roast and baked potatoes for dinner today.  It's going to be epic!  Then we are hopefully going to watch the second Librarian movie tonight.  We watched the first one yesterday, and it was a bit cheesy, but quite good.  (FYI, it's now a TV show, and the main character in the actual Librarian movies is the main character in the TV show, and Christian Kane [Eliot Spencer from Leverage, for the initiated] is in it as well!! I have not seen the TV show, but I wanna! :-)

So, that's all I have for now.  Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Epiphany!! Hope 2015 is an incredible year for all of you.  God bless!

No One Will Be Sleeping On the Night Of Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve to you all! I hope you all have a blessed Christmas day, and a wonderful Merry Christmas. I hope you receive the one true gift you wanted this year. For me, I pray I receive my gift too.

Isn't that line above so true? I remember lying in bed on Christmas Eve, unable to fall asleep, so excited and filled with anticipation that my insides shivered. I remember being able to hear the Christmas music playing on the radio in the living room, and when I lay very still in bed, I thought I could hear Santa on the roof. It took me forever to fall asleep, and I remember waking up, feeling a tingle in my toes, and know that it was Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve has always been one of my most favourite days. On Christmas Eve, we finish wrapping the presents, and bake ourselves into a super frenzy. As of 6:45pm tonight, we have finished making batches of pizzelles, biscotti, truffles, snowballs, sugar cookies, shortbread cookies, chocolate-dipped pretzels, and chocolate chip cookies.

Because it's Christmas Eve, I'm going to share another Christmas poem with you. I hope you like it. It was inspired by the picture posted below.

THE ANGEL'S LULLABY

The Babe lay on the Mother's knee,
the Angels gathered 'round.
On bended knee adored Him:
their wingtips brushed the ground.

The faint, sweet smell of heaven,
mixed with the fiddle's tune
rose like a fragrant incense
up to the sickle moon.

"Hosanna!" crooned the angels,
their joyous sigh of love
rising to God's throne on high,
and echoing above.

"Hosanna!" sang the angels,
The stars returned the same.
And all the silence in the night
Called out His holy name.

The Babe lay on the Mother's knee,
the fairest Christmas Rose.
The angels bent to kiss His face,
and guard His sweet repose.