Christmas Adam

Says the boy twin, "If the day before Christmas is Christmas Eve, then shouldn't the day after be...?"
And so, Christmas Adam is born.

Christmas has come and gone for another year.
We attended the Christmas Eve service at our home church, where (as mentioned in previous post) we wave red glow sticks at the end of the service during Silent Night.

The first time this happened, I was so glum I looked up an emergency late night Candelight Service at the Episcopal church and attended.
All by myself.
It was lovely. I slipped in the back door and sat in the back row.
During the Eucharist I stepped into the aisle and joined the solemn people up to the front. There were robes and candles and a wine filled goblet. A processional and a choir in the balcony. And real candles.

There's something so deliciously dangerous about fire in church.
The little kids tilt their candles until the wax pours down the sides,
and they point their fingers into the flame and pull it back and giggle
at each other while their parents sing above them, earnestly oblivious to their little pyrotechnic progeny below. I just love watching this.
I crunched across the dark parking lot afterwards,
shivering on the outside, but so warm on the In.

This year I decided to go to a nearby Catholic church. I was nervous especially because I was late, but there was another woman on the sidewalk outside the church, just about my age. I tried to look like I knew what I was doing until she said, "Do you know where the entrance is?" Here I thought I was the only one who dodged into strange churches in the dark on Christmas Eve.

I followed her in, but she disappeared quickly and I was left on a folding chair in the back. Suited me. I grabbed a prayer book and figured out the whole scheme in pretty good time. We bowed, we genuflected, we kneeled, we sang, we chanted. There was a "smoking bong" as the husband calls them, but it filled the church with a sort of...chokey kind of holy smell if that makes sense. A choir, a pipe organ. The place was packed. I liked it.

And now it is Christmas Adam, the Day After. I never feel depressed this day, I always feel so much as though it is the time for something new.

A new leaf, I guess.