Merry Christmas from the Curmudgeons

Wishing the couple dozen folks who usually float by this blog every few days (and the occasional new visitor) a very blessed Christmas.

For those of you who have to spend Christmas with relatives, visiting strange parishes where an indecently-dressed (and perhaps tipsy) stranger arrives late and is crammed into your pew, where you must endure a half-hour of children's' carolling that includes Jingle Bells and Rudolph before what is loosely described as a Christmas Mass, and (if you are disposed, at that point, to take communion at all) where you have to finesse your way into the priests' line to get a stare and a sigh because you receive our Lord kneeling, on the tongue, you are not alone! I, too, share your predicament. Take a confessor's advice, and carry along your 1962 Missal so you can pray it during the course of the Mass. And perhaps next year, invite the family to your house for Christmas, where you're within range of a good old-Rite Mass (after all, tolerating your nominally Catholic brother-in-law's complaints about the "guy mumbling to the wall in Latin" while he drinks your liquor next year is a small price to pay to avoid a repeat of this year's fiasco, isn't it?).

--Curmudgeon

PS, Yes, Darth Inebrious, we're aware that you're not among us unfortunates this night, and for that we are envious.