Saturday, December 26, 2009

Christmas (how's that for an original sounding title?)

Merry Christmas once again, everyone! I hope you all had a great day!

We arrived at church at 10 pm on Christmas Eve, to practice with the choir before we sang carols..."O Holy Night/Cantique de Noel", "Angels We Have Heard on High", "What Child is This", etc...for half an hour before Mass started.

Father came out into the dimly-lit church at 11 as we sang "My Sheep Were Grazing" and picked up the statue of Baby Jesus in the manger that was sitting on the altar. He then processed to the back of the church carrying the statue, accompanied by us singing "Gesu Bambino", put the statue in the nativity scene in the narthex, and then returned with the statue of the Infant of Prague as we sang "Silent Night." The Infant of Prague was placed on the top of the tabernacle, which is where it remains all through the Christmas season.

The Mass began, and we sang Hessler's "Missa Secunda". It went surprisingly well, seeing as we had started learning it in October and had nailed the Agnus Dei um...about 2 days previous? But it went with hardly a hitch. :)

After socializing for a while after Mass, we returned home around 1 am and sat up and drank egg nog and each opened a gift. Tradition!

My sister and I had to sing at the 10 am Christmas Day Mass, so we did that and then came home and had breakfast and opened gifts. I received many very nice gifts! I just don't feel like listing them all at the moment. ;) Oh, but I'm going to have to take some pictures of the decoupaged box I made for my sister! All you Regina Doman fans will especially like it!

Well, I was going to write a summary of our priest's Christmas sermon, but as I'm developing a splitting headache and can't remember much of it at the moment, it will have to wait! Uh oh...now I have two promised posts! heheh