Merry Christmas

 As I write this at about 10 minutes to 5 pm on Christmas Eve, the presents are wrapped, the cookies are baked and I've been to mass once. 

It's already shaping up to be a strange holiday.  Learned a couple of days ago that my mom tested positive for COVID earlier this week.  I know I should be freaked out, but have spoken with her on the phone a few times, and honestly ... she doesn't seem that badly off.  Except for a cough and a slight drop in energy, she said she really hadn't been experiencing any symptoms. She was given the same drug cocktail infusion that President Trump was given when he was infected, and she said it's remarkable how much better she feels.  She and her doctor did the math, and she believes that this coming Monday will be her 10 day mark, and if she continues to improve, her quarantine can be lifted.  My dad's would have to continue for a number of days thereafter, as he's been exposed to her.  He is a little older than her, and even when they're both healthy, his energy isn't as high as hers is, so she's keeping an eagle eye on him.  But so far, so good.

She did mention that the COVID has made her more wooly-headed than usual.  We're hoping that's not a permanent effect.

I played the piano at our 3 pm Christmas Eve mass.  That is our earliest mass every year.  As I'm sure I've mentioned before, we could start having Christmas masses even earlier on Christmas Eve.  We used to do a 1 pm, very popular with parishioners, until the Archdiocese cracked down on that sort of rule-bending.  My personal view is that, inasmuch as this is an exceptional health year (in a bad way), they could let us do a little more bending, just this once.  But, no.  The archdiocese's official recommendation is: Christmas is celebrated over an entire octave (i.e. Friday through Friday this year), so people can go any of those days if they want to go to Christmas mass.  It's an interesting idea, but I doubt it will catch on.  Going to church on Christmas is all wrapped up with people's family traditions and ethnic traditions.  Having them go to church on December 28th or 30th just won't fulfill the tradition.

Christmas draws more worshipers to our parish than any other day of the year.  Our ceiling for mass attendance is 25% of total seating capacity, so we won't be able to accommodate nearly as many worshipers as usual.  Our pastor has been very stressed about it: he doesn't want to turn anyone away, but he'd have to if they come out in the usual droves.  The 3 pm Christmas Eve mass is the first Christmas mass every year, and it's usually our most crowded.  This year, parishioners filled all the seats via pre-registration, and the parish had announced that they wouldn't accept any walk-ins.  But when I looked out over the church this afternoon, it really wasn't even very close to the permitted capacity.  It's quite cold today (about 18 degrees Fahrenheit at 3 pm), so the weather may have convinced some people to stay home.

Mass itself was low-key - too quiet for Christmas, but it's what we have to work with this year.  We're not permitted to have choirs.  We're not permitted to have more than one instrumentalist beyond the accompanist.  We're not permitted to sing the Gloria.  In fact, the people aren't permitted to sing, period.  The upshot of all these restrictions is that the mass which, in normal times, would be the most packed, festive and kid-intensive of the Christmas masses, was anything but on this day.  Instead, it was all kind of low-key and brief.  There was nothing wrong with it, but the whole thing was a bit of a buzz-kill.

Tomorrow, our family will have our present-opening frenzy early in the morning.  Then I have to do two masses as a deacon.  After that, I'm done, except for Christmas dinner.  This year is ham, baked beans, potato salad, rolls and some kind of fresh vegetable.  My wife has us subscribing to a delivery service called Imperfect Produce, so we get all sorts of vegetables now which we typically wouldn't get at the grocery store.  Earlier this week, we received a parsnip roughly the size of the Washington Monument.  I can't imagine what she will do with it, but my wife can be pretty creative in the kitchen, so by no means am I writing off the parsnip.

I said the cookies are baked.  I should clarify: my baking contribution is done.  But the main event hasn't happened yet.  My wife makes these little Slavic cookies called Kolachky.  The photo at this site looks reasonably like what she produces.  But her recipe is quite different than what is listed at that link.  The linked recipe is Polish, but her heritage is Slovak.  On matters of Kolochky, the Slovaks insist on distinguishing themselves from Poles.  Her cookie dough consists of only three ingredients: a half lb. each of butter (two sticks), cream cheese (one brick) and flour (apparently the equivalent of 1 3/4 cups).  No salt, no leavening agents, no vanilla, no eggs - none of those standard American cookie dough ingredients.  You soften the butter and the cream cheese, mix the three ingredients together, then refrigerate the dough overnight.  The next day, you roll out the dough until it is nearly paper-thin, cut it into 1 1/4" squares (a knife works fine, but we use a pizza cutter which is even better), plop a little fruit filling into the middle of each square, and then bring two opposite corners of each square together to form the shape which you can see in the photo.  Bake at 400 degrees until light brown - it doesn't take very long, I think 8-10 minutes.  When they come out of the oven, they are to die for.  Even a few days later, they're wonderful.

Merry Christmas to all of you, contributors, commenters and lurkers.  May Christ's presence among us bring us peace and unity.