This Holy Tide of Christmas

Merry Christmas!

We're in the Octave of Christmas--the day itself and the seven days that follow--which, like Easter, the Church celebrates as one great feast.  The joy of these holy days overflows into the entire week afterward.  So I'm still wishing people "Merry Christmas."

I went into a Target yesterday, three days after Christmas, to see if I could find any Christmas candy on sale.  All the remaining Christmas items were shoved into the back corner of the store, piled into carts and arranged on mostly empty shelves.  And on the way there, I passed a Valentine's Day display.

Now I don't really expect commercial enterprises to follow the Church's liturgical calendar.  They've been pushing "holiday shopping" for the last two months in order to boost their bottom lines.  Now they've got to move on to the Next Thing to Prepare For in order to make another buck.

Unfortunately, most Christians follow suit.  They celebrate the Christmas season prior to Christmas.  Parties are never scheduled after the holiday.  Christmas trees, which have been up and decorated since Thanksgiving, are thrown out immediately.  And where are the Christmas carols on December 26th?  So, come Christmas afternoon, after the presents have been opened and dinner served, things never quite seem to be all that merry.  No wonder the joy people expect to have seems rather empty and anticlimactic by that point; it's been exhausted long before.

Our job as lay Catholics is to convert the culture to Christ.  Instead, we've been converted by it.  We shouldn't start celebrating holidays until they happen, and we should celebrate the liturgical seasons when they actually occur.

That's why I didn't put up decorations in my apartment until just before Christmas and why they are staying up until February 2, the Presentation of the Lord, which marked the end of the Christmas season in the old liturgical calendar.  In some places--including my house--that tradition remains even today.  That's why I waited until the Christmas season to wish people a merry Christmas.

But then I'm pretty comfortable being counter-cultural.

Let's Apply the First of Life's Certainties to the Second

I filed my taxes the other day. I can't think of a greater waste of my time. Granted, it only took about an hour, and I was able to do it myself rather than send it off to a tax preparer. Still, this is not something I should have to do, because the government shouldn't be taking money from my paycheck.

I'm not against taxes. I'll pay them. But I want it on my own terms, not the governments. There might have been a few people who had the same idea a couple hundred years ago.

I recommend you check out the FairTax. This is a tax system I can get behind Also see if your library has The FairTax Book on its shelves. It's a real easy introduction to the whole concept. I'm planning on getting the newest book FairTax: The Truth from interlibrary loan soon.

FYI

In case anyone is interested, I will be in Iowa for a week and a half starting Monday. It will be mostly spent in Red Oak, though I will be in Des Moines from Monday through Wednesday. before a quick jaunt to Iowa City to get Sarah.

Looking forward to time with the family for Christmas. Not looking forward to the drive.

Did I Miss Thanksgiving?

Toward the end of the Depression, FDR attempted to extend the Christmas shopping season by declaring that Thanksgiving be moved forward a week from the last Thursday of November. This action was met with outrage--only half the states accepted the declaration in 1939--and it turned out that the extra week didn't make much difference in sales.

I don't know why FDR thought capitalism would be confined by the late date of Thanksgiving. We're been deep into Christmas for two weeks now. Santa's on TV commercials already; carols are pumped through ceiling speakers in ornament-lined store aisles.

Now, I love Christmas. But I love it in late December, where the joy spills over into January. And it has nothing to do with buying anything.

So, let's give Thanksgiving its due. After all, what American doesn't love a great feast?

I am Miserable

I've been bitching to Tonia and the parents; I might as well widen the scope.

This damn snow is unrelenting. It's fallen at least once every week for the last seven. And that cruel mistress Mother Nature takes a day or two and melts the snow during the day than freezes it into a thick slab of ice overnight.

I haven't moved my car yet. I did get snow chains in the mail yesterday; however, I'm afraid that if they don't work and I can't get my car up the road, there's no place for me to put the car. Other than maybe the ditch, which is where I put Tina's truck Sunday afternoon.

It cost me $100 to get the truck pulled out. The guy who did it is the same one who towed away the Malibu, and he also lives on my road. But I got no sympathy--or price break--from him. That's probably how he could afford his four-wheel drive vehicle.

Hopefully February with bring 60 degree weather like last year.

DAMN YOU, EL NINO!

I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! JESUS, PLEASE STOP DUMPING SNOW ON US!

We got more yesterday. Eight inches at my house. The road's not plowed. Nobody's plowed my driveway since the last snow. I haven't moved the new car in three weeks, except into the garage after my landlady left for Arizona.

Oh, Arizona. How beautiful it must be there. Hell, gimme the 65 degree weather they've got in New England.

I haven't been anywhere but work and Mass, and that's thanks to my good friends Dennis and Gail and Ann. Tina's let me take her truck to Safeway for groceries.

Today the wind is whipping the snow around at 50 mph and creating drifts, some as deep as a foot. There's no use shoveling; it doesn't let up.

And there's a chance of more snow again tonight.

WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO DESERVE THIS, O LORD!

Wonder and Awe of the Lord

What a beautiful day in the mountains. I'm going to take a short hike this afternoon.

I took the day off because Archbishop Chaput was at Our Lady for Confirmation this morning. Twenty-one teens and adults were sealed with the Holy Spirit. During the Mass, my emotions swung wildly from tears to rage and everything in between.

I usually get choked up during these great sacramental milestones--today was no exception--and I was keenly aware of the Lord's presence after receiving Him in the Eucharist.

But alongside these sublime graces were also screaming children throughout the homily unchecked by parents, the elderly man with a hearing aid complaining in a loud voice and his wife shhh-ing him at the same volume, the woman next to me leaving after Communion. And don't forget the music.

We celebrated the great sacrament of Confirmation with our great Archbishop, but we didn't sing a single hymn to the Holy Spirit, not even Come Holy Ghost. Instead it was those great Catholic standards Gather Us In, Be Not Afraid, Here I Am Lord, and Sing to the Mountains, with a tambourine during the refrain.

I fucking hate tambourines.

The Week That Changed the World

Here it is, Palm Sunday, when we triumphantly enter Jerusalem with the Christ. By the end of the week, we will be shouting, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

I was in Fort Collins last night, searching for a new tie for Easter (but instead I got new black slacks) and stopped in at Barnes and Noble. My trips to bookstores used to take me to the philosophy section; now I always check out the religion stacks.

Here, on the eve of the holiest days of the year, Barnes and Noble had packed the shelves with fiction and non-fiction books that cry out not only "Crucify him!" but also "He is not Lord! The Catholic Church has lied about who he is!" These books include Misquoting Jesus, What Jesus Meant, The Jesus Papers, The Templar Legacy, The Last Templar, The Gospel of Judas, Holy Blood Holy Grail, Angels and Demons, and a huge table devoted entirely to The Da Vinci Code. Apparently these are the recommended books for Easter.

Yet nowhere could I find the new Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a 200 page Q and A summation of the essential truths of the Faith.

Fine. Set out books that attempt to dash Christ and His Church to bits; all I ask is that we are given equal representation.

If you want to see who Jesus really was, if you want to know what the Church really teaches, then attend the great liturgy of the Holy Triduum this week. Rejoice in the gift of His Body and Blood on Holy Thursday; weep for your sins that crucified Him on Good Friday; cry "Alleluia!" on the Night of nights, Holy Saturday Easter Vigil; proclaim His Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning.

No book will teach you the truth of Jesus of Nazareth. To know Him, you must enter into the Week that changed the world.

My car was sick, so I took it down to Fort Collins to see the doctor today. I had a book with me and set out on foot to the coffee shop a few blocks away.

I enjoy walking, I always have, as long as it's not in a shopping mall. I get tired of that real fast. I walked (or biked) to school for years prior to high school--when it was uncool to walk and I became lazy. I'm fortunate enough to have gone to college at a university with a beautiful compact campus and now a small mountain village conducive to walking from place to place. Walking in big cities, however, is another story.

There's virtual no pedestrian sidewalks along College St. in Fort Collins, so I have to travel through parking lots and across grassy patches. Where there are sidewalks, they're hugging the curb and cars fly by at 45mph three feet away. And crossing at intersections is just about as bad. Unfortunately, most Anerican cities have these same problems.

I'm also not a fan of the newer residential areas with roads that wind and turn like ant farm tunnels. At one point on my way to a nearby library, I got sick of the obnoxious roar of the cars along the main street, so I tried a quieter route through a neighborhood. After winding in a direction I thought was more or less diagonal, I ended up back on the main road only a few blocks ahead of where I'd left it, having traveled in an arc. Give me square blocks any day.

And give me new shoes. These ones gave me blisters.

Found in a cabin today a recent copy of Vanity Fair with Paris Hilton on the cover. Something in the headline mentioned "amateur porn star." How did pornography become so acceptable and mainstream?

And can someone please explain to me how porn stars are not prostitutes?

Just what the hell is so glamorous about Paris Hilton, Ron Jeremy, and Jenna Jameson? AND WHY THE HELL DO I EVEN KNOW WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE?

Pornography does nothing for the dignity of women or sex. It goes against everything feminists have fought for in the past 40 years. Then why is there no outcry?

If you're a woman, you should fight it tooth and nail. If you're a man, you should throw it in the garbage, stop salivating at the thought of "two chicks making out," and shame other men who glorify it.

Viewing porn isn't "healthy" or "natural." It doesn't aid in a mature understanding of sexuality. It isn't a rite of passage; it's a stinting of true growth. Porn only demeans women, making them merely objects of men's pleasure.

If you don't think that's true, then you don't know or talk to any men who regularly watch porn.