Christmas Nostalgia Alert Addendum

My friend Celia Kelly Bredenbeck made such a great comment at Facebook about last night's Christmas post that I thought it deserved to be showcased here as a reply. Take it away...

Wow...you and I are on exactly the same page about Christmas, right down to figuring that out about Paul Coker Jr., heh.

I have always enjoyed the Christmas' mystic aspects, the solemnity, the kernel of the mystery. There's a reason I nearly broke my neck sprinting to the sacristy this year to sign up to read Isaiah 7 at the Christmas Eve Mass (we have it at 5:30 and not 12:00) before anyone else could. When I read that passage, I get a sense of the depth of the wonder and awe of the concepts we as "cradle Catholics" often take for granted. And I always like my Christmas music with at least some minor key elements. I prefer "O Little Town of Bethlehem" to "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" any day.

When I was a little girl, we had a little Baby Jesus doll in a manger under the tree every year. I used to wait until everyone else was out of the house, and, once every Christmas season, I would sing my heart out to the baby in His manger -- everything from "Silent Night" to "Mary's Boy Child" to "Adeste Fideles" and the one glorious year in my early teens when I finally mastered "Oh, Holy Night". I continued this well into my teens and even kept the tradition when I would come home from college.

I have never liked to sing in front of people, though I am often stopped after Mass and complimented (I always get pretty embarrassed, too. Believe it or not, I have a shy side.) I liked that there was one gift I could always offer, and that it was a private, personal thing.

But I never told anyone about it until now. If they laughed, I would have been honor-bound to kick their asses, and that didn't fit with what I was trying to do there, so I kept it to myself.