three
Our usual Christmas Eve innit, 66°F going to 70° this morning before plummeting as the front passes through, drenching then leaving us in the thirties for whatever serves tonight in place of what once was Midnight Mass. I remember first going with my Father Christmas Eve 1948, another car memory, new green 1948 Dodge sedan leaving St Andrew's Episcopal Church, the parking area in back, my father rolling the window down and saying "Merry Christmas, John" to Mr Pennel, our choir star, as we backed out to head home after the service. The rain starts now, as ospreys dive for mullet just off 7H: read they've about 50% success, the dive I just witnessed not bringing up a fish.
Could be worse, some are having/expecting snow blizzard, BTDT, a beauty of nature that's not for me though everyone is entitled to see it, or to be there at least once in a lifetime.
As I sat on a sunny bank,
A sunny bank, a sunny bank,
As I sat on a sunny bank
On Christmas-Day in the morning.
I spy'd three ships come sailing by,
Come sailing by, come sailing by,
I spy'd three ships come sailing by
On Christmas-Day in the morning.
And who should be with these three ships,
With these three ships, with these three ships,
And who should be with these three ships
But Joseph and his Fair Lady.
O he did whistle, she did sing,
And all the bells on earth did ring
For joy that our Saviour Christ he was born
On Christmas-Day in the morning.
Not going to read it again, but before the day's over I'll browse up and watch Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol". Someone thought it not good that in morphing from bitter, wretched miser of whom it was said “even the heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet … often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scrooge never did” to magnanimous do-gooder, Ebenezer spoiled the Christmas goose tradition and ruined the Christmas goose industry by showing up at the Cratchit home with a turkey bigger than Tiny Tim. IDK, maybe any damage is more subtly in our embrace, at our most holy season, of a totally secular story. Unless we are meant to take Marley as the Holy Ghost. But then, Christmas itself is our own appropriation of pagan winter solstice festivals, so ...
What about those three ships
