Winding down the Festivus

Wrapping is in shreds, empty bottles await recycling, leftovers are devoured; it the holidays' last gasp. We celebrated everything, even Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us.

I used to work with some huge Seinfeld fans. They could quote episodes chapter and verse. While they never had very high strength-to-weight ratio aluminum poles in their cubes, they did proclaim Festivus miracles on occasion. Me, I just drank the wine. Not great, but not bad, especially after a couple of earlier glasses and some grievance airing.

So now it's time to clean up, put stuff away, take time off to toast the new year, and move forward. The seed catalogs are already arriving, days are getting longer, the Geib-style series 500 case I want is on sale and the exercise routine must be re-started. There's gift cards to spend, organizing to do, birds to feed and projects started in the fall that still need finished. It's as if Christmas is already just a memory. Where did it go?

Adeste fideles

Adeste fideles, laeti triumphantes,
Venite, venite in Bethlehem.
Natum videte regem angelorum
Venite adoremus, venite adoremus,
venite adoremus Dominum

As a child of five or six, I was taught the Latin first verse of "O Come All Ye Faithful". I was too young to be required to take Latin in school, and Vatican II was eliminating the Latin Mass, but Adeste fideles was alive and well at Christmas. Being a small rural family, mostly isolated from grandparents, aunts and uncles, our holiday traditions were few, but important. A real tree decorated with ancient and home made ornaments, topped with a spire, draped in tinsel with a creche beneath. Mom's perfect spritz cookies. Dad's Polish Christmas carols on clay 78's. And Adeste fideles. When I learned that song, my father was so proud. It meant so much to him that I could share something from his childhood, and from my mother's as well. They both grew up with the high Latin Christmas Mass, the liturgy all chanted in Latin. There was incense, it was foreign, it was mysterious and holy. For them, that felt like Christmas. Adeste fideles brought back those memories and made Christmas feel like home. Today when I sing those mysterious words, they never fail to bring a tear to my eye. Tears for innocence lost, tears for my father, tears for Christmas past. But also tears of joy, for the love of Christmas.

The Snow / Silent Night