Between Thursday

 So, breakfast, then, about breakfast this awesome Thursday morning, the only one of the Year that's sandwiched between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve, between Christmas Day and New Years Day. A hearty serving of my incomparable oyster dressing. Cold, straight out of the refrigerator chilled this morning: it's just as delicious cold as hot. There are two servings left, maybe one heated for noon dinner today, or I may have another turkey sandwich like the turkey sandwich I had for breakfast yesterday.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are about two fixed immovables: (2) special dishes that we don't have other Times of the year; and (1) people we love, having them around.

If it's different for you, that's fine. Holiday contents vary from one to another, person to person, family to family, religion to religion, culture to culture. It's all a package: the religiosity of it is the book cover, the facilitator, the prime mover like the sleeper-cab truck powering the eighteen-wheeler loaded with contents. Again, the book cover that may or may not reveal the story. The winter festival that we now observe as Christmas was our European pagan forebears' winter solstice festival of Saturnalia, simply reformed as Jesus' birthday because everyone loves a party and the winter festival was going to keep on keeping on anyway, so change its name and give it a new cover, maybe pull it with a Freightliner instead of a Kenworth. Inside, the parties continue!

If you didn't realize that, maybe you should have gone to a theological seminary where all manner of secrets are set free!

For Christians, the greater winter celebration was Epiphany, Jesus' baptism, when the Holy Spirit came upon him as a dove and the voice from heaven declared either, "You are/this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (or "Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I begotten thee," largely written out of the script because major theological issues attach). Only the western church has come to see the arrival of Matthew's magi with gifts as The Epiphany, and our church has, somewhat subtly, shifted toward reclaiming Jesus' baptism as The Epiphany.  

The only reasons I can think of why we should keep Matthew's magi story as The Epiphany is so we can sing "We three kings of orient are," and the exchange of gifts; although, actually we've incorporated that event, kings, camels, gifts and hymn, into Christmas, so we're good either way.

Even in America, Christmas has not always been the commercial extravaganza we've made it into. As a boy, I worked at my father's fish-house with a charming, seedy old man in bib overalls, chewing tobacco or spitting the wad of snuff lumped between his bottom lip and bottom teeth, who told me that when he was a boy Christmas meant getting an orange, and sometimes a gift such as a new belt or a pair of socks. 

Still and all, a highlight of Christmas for me is our Christmas Eve service at church. From age thirteen on, December 1948, I went to "midnight Mass" with my father - - at St Andrew's Episcopal Church, in our new Dodge car. I remember as we backed out after the service, my father rolling down his window and saying, "Merry Christmas, John" to John Pennell, who was star tenor in our choir. Christmas Eve in various places around the country and world, but mainly, and beginning and ending, right here in Panama City, land that I love.

Stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with the light from above.

Pax 

T88&c