Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone is enjoying a blessed Christmas Eve. As I write, it's now 1am on December 25th, so technically it's Christmas morning, but really it's still the Eve until sunrise, or at least until Santa comes down the chimney. On that score, I've been checking the NORAD Tracker all night long, but as of now, the milk and cookies remain uneaten on the table where I've left them. I don't have a chimney in the Tiny Apartment, so I expect Santa will enter through the door. NORAD's got him over Anchorage, Alaska at the moment. Perhaps he will continue south along the Pacific Coast, and if so I should imagine he'll be here within the hour.

We had a very nice service in church this evening, featuring Good Singing by the choir. "Gesu Bambino" is a hard one, ideally suited for a much bigger ensemble, but we did okay. Much better was "Rejoice" by Frank Hernandez which we knocked out of the park. We also sang a whole bunch of carols, including "Angels We Have Heard On High", with it's "Glo-o-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o-o-ria" refrain, one of my very favorites. This is my sixth Christmas with the choir and it was one of the best. 

Later, at 10:30, I walked over to Our Lady of Lourdes, my Mom's church which is just across the street from me. They always have a very inspiring Midnight Mass, which I've been attending for many years now, except tonight it was so jam packed, even in the lobby, that for most of the service I sat outside on the patio and listened on the overflow speakers. The message and the feeling was the same.

I did watch a movie, and in fact I watched two! How about that? Not too shabby, eh? That's time management at work, a science at which I've become quite adept. After waking fairly early at 10am and pounding a sink full of dishes, I sat back to enjoy the 1938 version of "A Christmas Carol", starring Reginald Owen as Ebeneezer Scrooge. This is the one most Americans from my generation grew up seeing on TV, and I find it compares favorably with the revered 1951 version starring Alistair Sim. Though Sim might be the quintessential Scrooge, Owen also captures the man's miserable ethos with considerable flair, and he has MGM's production values backing him up, so the movie looks glorious and checks in tightly at 69 minutes.

After our service at Reseda Methodist, I came home and watched a movie called "Holiday Affair" (1949), which I discovered recently through an Amazon recommendation. I ended up getting it from the Libe, and it turned out to be something of an unrecognized Christmas Classic. It stars Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh, but I'll have to save the majority of the review for another time on account of the fact that it's now 2am, and because of the continuing hustle and bustle of the holiday.

And now I am rejoining you at 11:30 on Christmas Morning. Between the above paragraph and this one, I have slept (excepting one or two middle-of-the-night awakenings to munch sweets), and I will soon be heading over to Pearl's for a nice Christmas lunch. After that, we will probably take her to see the holiday lights, either in Granada Hills or at Candy Cane Lane. I should be back home around 8pm or so, at which time we will watch another Christmas Classic. I hope you are having a wonderful holiday and enjoying the season. It's been very special this year, as it always is.

Merry Christmas, God Bless and Tons Of Love! See you tonight at the Usual Time.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)