Christmas Mass

Dashing through the morning mist down PIE in my trusty automobile, I contemplated whether my gold strappy sandals are too slutty for Christmas Mass.

To my relief, I found (upon arrival at church) that my bling bling shoes pale in comparison to what some of the local churchgoers are wearing. In my absence, they have moved on from wearing Laura Ashley frocks and pink cardigans to low slung jeans these days.

I met a very nervous Dailytoe at the entrance. She asked me whether I think she will combust sponstaneously upon entering God's holy temple. I assured her that she will not (even though we both know that there is a real possibility) . In any case, I’m pretty sure they have a bucket of holy water on standby somewhere for such incidences. (No, she did not combust btw. She has been a good girl obviously :)

Once we are seated, the service began with the choir singing ‘Excelsis Deo’. I spent a good minute reminiscing how the Queen used to scream this exact hymn in my ears two Christmas ago. Dailytoe leaned over and whispered that the ‘deo’ in the song reminds her of ‘deodorant’ which prompted us to sing along happily to - “Glo-oo-ria, in Ex-cel-sis De-o-dorant”.

After the carol singing, we were referred to the book of Matthews on the birth of Christ. I was having trouble finding the passages and Dailytoe was ‘tsk-tsking’ at my incompetence. “New Testament lar,” she nudged.

As the pastor continued his sermon, I found myself reading up the rest of the chapter with interest. Did you know that if you are ever tempted to commit adultery, you should gouge your eyes out and throw them away for it is better that you go blind than bring your entire being into sin? Also, you should not throw pearls* to the pigs lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. Naturally, Dailytoe and I couldn’t help silently acting these two scenarios out. She did quite a good impression of a disgruntled swine.

The sermon of the day is on the ‘sordid birth/life of Jesus’ to illustrate that we can always rise above our sordid ancestry. The pastor kept dropping catchwords such as ‘colourful women’ and ‘women of ill-repute.’ I was initially confused how a woman can be called 'colourful'– until I realized that anything other than white (virginal) is consider a colour. In the meantime, Dailytoe pointed out to me that the definition of ‘debauchery’ according to the Bible means ‘living a life of lust and drunkenness.’ Our faces fell. As you can imagine, it was all very educational yet stressful at the same time for the both of us.

As the morning dallies along, the congregation soon became restless. I spotted a couple of people in front nodding off to sleep. To entertain Dailytoe, I made hand puppets using the pockets of my dress and animate them sleeping and snoring and watched Dailytoe nearly fell off her seat, laughing silently.

In closing, we sang all 6 stanzas of one of my favourite hymns, “O come all ye faithful.” As I belted it out with all the might of my diseased lungs, I thought about how lucky I am to be sitting in church on this bright Christmas morning with no less, one of my best friends.

It has been an extremely eventful year for me with the last couple of weeks being an absolute mayhem of events which I am slowly starting to feel for (yes, I’m very slow in this area). Although I may jest and fidget about so, I really do enjoy being in church for it has always been a very special place of peace for me. It is unfortunate that in my hustled life, I have neglected to retreat here more often.

I said a silent apology to my Lord for my long absence and I heard his reply in my heart. “Welcome home, my child.”

May you all have a blessed Christmas too, my friends.

* Pearls = (Figuratively) ‘Word of God’