As usual, the Christmas Holiday started for me the night before. GFJ was away with her family, and I had an evening out as Marian. And where does a T-Gal like me go when she wants to be with people on Christmas Eve? Church, of course.
Christmas Eve would be the only chance I'd have to spend some time with people in Marian Mode, and I made sure to dress up nice for the evening. So I made my face up, put on a little black dress, and out the door I went. Arriving at the church about 30 minutes early, I decided to call my brother to figure out what we were going to do the next day. He told me that he'd call me back in the morning, as my sister in law just checked into rehab. (I can only imagine how much of a hit this is going to be to their savings. She has a nasty habit of self destructing every time something good starts going on in my brother's life.) So we disconnected for the evening, and I walked into the Church.
As I've mentioned before, this parish shares a priest and a deaconess with a sister parish a few miles away. This parish gets the priest for Christmas Eve, and the other for Christmas Day. It is an arrangement that is working for now. But as parishioners die out (or move away), one church will likely be de-consecrated. Given the location of this parish, the land is more valuable than the building as it is in a very convenient part of town. Of course, I can also see the building being sold off to a growing congregation, most likely made up of Korean or Chinese immigrants. (I've seen this happen with other churches in the lower Hudson Valley, so this wouldn't be a surprise.) Luckily, the sister parish has more than enough room for the people from this church, and it is only a short drive away.
In my childhood, churches would be packed both on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve's attendance was between a third to a quarter of what the church could hold when fully packed. Unlike my past visits, I decided to sit halfway to the front of the pews. This time, I felt I had made a mistake, but not for anything to do with my acceptance as Marian. When the service started, and the hymn singing began, the fellow behind me was singing in the most god awful off key voice I've ever heard. It took away from my enjoyment of hearing the choir sing. But I won't complain much. The older gentleman behind me was continuing a tradition of communal participating in the singing of hymns.
While I'm on the topic of hymn singing, I have to mention something that made me feel good. The service started with the choir singing "Silent Night" in German. Although I grew up with the English language version of the song, this is one composition that sounds better in German. (Sadly, there are way too many people who think that German can't sound just as silky smooth as a romance language. This version of the song puts that misconception to rest.) This choir is one of the reasons I enjoy going to this church. They have a good music director, and bring back feelings of what church should have been like when I grew up.
Around 9:30, the service ended and I had a question to answer. Do I go to a movie? Or, do I go to a diner and have a pre-Christmas dinner? I chose the dinner. By the time I was done, I had missed the last showing of the movie for the evening. So I ended up going home for the night.
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Christmas came with no phone call from my brother. So I had to call him to find out what we were doing for the day. He said to come down, and we'll pick dad up from the nursing home, then we'll order some Chinese. I had to joke with him about becoming an honorary Jew for the day, as many Jews have made it a tradition to go to Chinese restaurants on Christmas. This allows them to eat out on Christmas Day, enjoying a cuisine which doesn't mix dairy and meat products. (Of course, the idea of eating "Safe Treyf" also appeals to many.) So I proceeded to get ready to go out while my brother made his trip to the nursing home to pick up my dad.
Leaving my place a little after 2:00, I arrived at my brother's place around 3:15. The usual traffic jams didn't cause me any problems, as I was able to take side streets from the Clearview Expressway out to my brother's place. As expected, my brother had Chinese takeout menus in hand for us to place our orders. A little later, we had a nice feast on food that was both too salty and too fatty while being too tasty to resist. My brother wanted to show a video that he had saved on his phone. But we couldn't figure out how to cast screen images from the phone to the TV. The closest we came was getting YouTube videos to display on his TV, and that bothered my brother. He spent the next hour trying to get things to work with his phone and his TV to no avail. By the time 7:00 came around, I was getting tired, and I needed the second cup of coffee to give me the energy to drive home safely.
On the way home, I chatted with GFJ, who had just dropped her mom off at her place. We agreed on when we'd meet tomorrow, but not the where. Neither of us knew which movies were playing at the local theaters, and I said that I'd check things out and give her some choices that she could look at when she got home.
Keep your fingers crossed for me....
