I managed to stay polite and get myself dressed and out the door, but it's a good thing no one here can read minds. I was stewing. Thinking to myself something along the lines of, "Thre's plenty of masses, why this one, why this early. Grrrrrr. It's just a show of faith. Grrrrr. Everyone goes to Misa de Gallo just so they can show how holy they are Grrrrrrr." Have I mentioned that I don't function in the early morning? Scratch that. I actually like early morning, if I have sufficient time to ease into it. And 'early morning' is 6:30. NOT 4:30.
That said, my mind changed pretty much as soon as we arrived at the church. It was full to overflowing with people spilling out the doors and into the parking lot. Many, us included, brought along their own stools and chairs so that they would have a place to sit. Some of the hymns were Christmas songs that I recognised. This was a big deal, as up to this point all the Christmas music has either been familiar words set to strange tunes, or familiar tunes, not in English, or with different words entirely. It was so great to hear "The First Noel" and "Gloria in Exelsius Deo". I finally felt like it was Christmas and not just another party coming up.
Another thing which lifted my mood was the way in which they performed the Lord's Prayer. I look askance at the church in many ways regarding religious doctrine, but I do believe that it can function well as a community or family. Prayer, I often feel should be a private affair, and ritualised praying in a church often feels stilted and fake. Here, though, the Lord's Prayer is sung as a hymn with the congregation holding hands. It didn't feel particularly holy, as in 'talking to God', but it did feel like here was a strong community, a safe place, a family that would look out for one another beyond blood, and that, I think, is enough.
After mass, it was only just getting light. Cz played on the computer while I read a little. Soon, a drowsy PI came in wanting to play. We bounced around the bed until it was time to go down for breakfast. After breakfast, we puttered online, napped, and played with PI. By lunchtime, family started arriving for tomorrow's Christmas Eve party. We visited for a bit, then I retreated to the room to send out Christmas e-mails and update the blog. PI and Cz soon followed.
We took turns keeping an eye on the kid. I kept a word document up behind the blog so that when she would climb into my lap, she could type to her little heart's content and not mess anything up. While she was occupied with the computer, Cz filled out Christmas cards for all the children. When she got bored with typing, I would switch back to the blog, and he would let her play with cards he wasn't using, and otherwise keep her amused.
This morning, one of the games we played with PI was to let her draw in our journals with both our black pens and the gold pens we had bought for writing Christmas tags. This afternoon, when I finished blogging, I got out Cz's colour pencil set. I figured maybe 15 minutes of quiet playing, but between colouring, sharpening the pencils, and playing with the shavings, PI entertained herself for about 2 hours. She also invented a new game where she would tell me letters, colours, and words to write, and then would spell them out for me. She's a very clever 2 year old, that one.
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