Being a bit silly

Well, having admitted that I still wait for Father Christmas, I'm entitled to indulge my seasonal taste for the silly.

How well I remember when a small number of relatives from my large extended family (probably no more than 40 people) used to gather on Christmas Eve. This being the night when everyone was together, Santa Claus arrived at about 9:30 PM rather than on Christmas morning. There were three children present who would have been under the age of 5.

One year, when I was a director of music in a parish, I had two services, on in the evening, the other at midnight, and had said I'd drop in on the festivities in between. It was definitely a 'leave the door unlocked - with all this noise, no one would hear a knock anyway' night. As luck would have it, Santa Claus (in the person of one cousin stamping about upstairs to simulate reindeer hooves) arrived at the very moment that I did. As I opened the front door, my cousin's son (aged 3 or so) began shouting with glee, thinking Santa was coming in. I doubt that, at any time in my life, anyone was ever less happy to see me.

Moving along... Some of my family tended to marry late, and it happened that my parents were 70 and 68 before they had a grandchild. I'm sure all kids think their grandparents memories are as far-off as Alexander the Great, but the gap in age between my dad and grandson Christopher made it seem more like the age of the T. Rex. On one occasion, Sam was telling Christopher all about 'how it was when I was a boy' - not intending to be at all funny, though stories about, for example, going to the toilet outside ("my mother put out a kerosene heater... madonna mia, one side a' you'd be roastin', the other side'd be freezin'") had little Christopher roaring with laughter.

Knowing that Christopher had a well-stocked library (largely a gift from me), including Andersen's fairy tales, I could not resisting commenting, "Let Grandpa tell you about all those matches he sold on Christmas Eve." Sam was immune to imaginative literature, and responded (he'd been a grocer) that Christmas Eve in the store was the worst day of 'de ho year.' (Forgive me - my own accent is so dreadful, even if my grammar is a bit better, that I sometimes cannot resist throwing in the flavour of my dad's. He could not pronounce two consonants together, and somehow his stories sound better in his own tones.)

Trouble with us romantic sorts is that we can fall into a 'let down' mode around the time of Christmas. Somehow, I'd expected that reciting the Offices today - my tiny tree with its gold, pink and white ornaments lit - a sherry beside me - Gregorian chants for Advent in the background - would verge on the magical. Instead, my back aches from cleaning! I miss friends I cannot see this year. I'm starting to feel as if I spend a third of my time either dragging out bags to the dustbin or cleaning a cat box. And I'm so hoping I do not live to regret washing and cutting the fresh vegetables for tomorrow's buffet here a day in advance.

Why should I include such a worthless entry? (I don't know... I have not had that much sherry...) Perhaps because, now and then, I receive e-mails from would-be mystics who are looking for very intense experiences of prayer. I am not a mystic, but my life of prayer has spanned decades, and my romantic side would have like, perhaps, for the Infant Jesus to embrace me, with an angelic choir heard in the background. (That's a joke, by the way. Were I to see visions or hear heavenly choirs, I would not know whether to call for the ambulance or the undertaker.)

The fact is that very little of prayer has to do with feelings - and, the older I get, the more I see that it also has little to do with certainty. It is an act of the will in the end - and, with liturgical prayer in particular, 'going through the motions,' knowing that doxology captures what the mind cannot grasp, and that the strength of such prayer is that one may lean on the entire Church. There are days when I'm barely certain whether there is a God... but still think I just received his Body and Blood at the anamnesis of his Incarnation and resurrection.

Well, off to see if some music lifts the 'blues'... I cannot think of any situation which is not improved by music, though I'd best hold off on the weepy Scottish carols today. The Christmas season is nearly here!

(Gloriana goes off to hang her stocking... even if the only thing she'll find in it on Christmas morning is her highly curious cat.)