Merry Christmas 2025!

Christmas lights through the front door. Christmas Day, 2025.

“Oh my! I don’t usually have more than one, but it is the holidays….” [cue hysterical laughter]

Merry Christmas, y’all! I wish you all the meaning of the day. For the Catholics, and the similarly aligned, we look forward to the 12 Days of Christmas beginning today. To our fellow Christians, we celebrate fraternally, the incarnation of God, the Creator of the Universe. To the rest of America and those who choose to throw in with us, this represents a time vaguely associated with the Solstice that causes the Northern Hemisphere to contemplate the brightening of days, the eventual advent of spring, and a time where we think about love of our fellow humans, the idea we may achieve peace on Earth, and that individuals will find the emotional connection we all seek. (I’m sorry, Southern Hemisphere. I haven’t got anything for you on this one. The days will grow shorter. The warmth will fade away. And in your coldest times you will not have the bright spot of Christmas to look forward to. I’m feeling your pain.)

Our personal Christmas has been especially meaningful to me. My best friend in the choir, a bass like me, died 18 days ago. An ordained priest who left the clergy to pursue a ‘worldly life’, he never stopped being what priests aspire to be (if they are true priests): the lowly shepherds who gather the sheep who stray and return them to the fold. I suppose he never will be venerated, beatified, or sanctified, but he established a spiritual North Star for me, and his death so close to Christmas has rocked me emotionally and spiritually. That I say this day’s mass proved especially moving to me makes me think that the last time I felt this way occurred in 2019 exactly two months after my mother died (and I retired). It’s funny how we imbue meaning into the same annual ritual liturgy.

I approach my faith through music and musical ministry. Thus, the Midnight Mass this year meant I dwelt in the choir loft yet again despite thinking, “How much longer can I stay up until 2 or 3 a.m.?” I reference my comment to my recently departed friend from the bass section who last year at 84 found it a requirement to be in the loft on Christmas Eve, preparing for the first hour of the birth of Jesus. He could not stand for more than 10-15 minutes. He exerted himself to climb the steps to the top riser where the basses reside. Contrary to offering complaint, he climbed with a smile on his face. I kept thinking about him, about my slight musical retreat from participating in what my vocal gift allows me to do, and about how this night above most others enriches the spiritual experience for those who attend but Christmas and Easter.

We presented 45 minutes of music from a brass quintet (plus tympani), two organists using our CB Fisk Opus 147 pipe organ, and the two dozen voices of our choir. I invite you to follow that link to the page describing the organ. It inferentially mentions our cathedral space which remains one of the largest Roman Catholic cathedrals in America, providing space for about 2,000 worshippers.

Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral, Raleigh, NC, preparing for Midnight Mass 2025. Two transepts exist to both sides of the altar area. The choir loft, foreground, shows the camera which will transmit a YouTube livestream, the seats and stands for the brass quintet, and is taken from the top riser where the basses sit. Christmas Day 2025.

Not unusually at Christmas, parishioners packed our cathedral.

Here’s a not-unusual detail for folks like me:

Spend Christmas Eve morning planning the logistics for the next 48 hours.
Align meal times with reality
Take a nap for 1-2 hours sometime during the 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. timeframe
Shower a second time…perform necessary personal grooming functions
Continue day to its normal concluding time (for seniors), but have dinner just a bit later
About the time one would prepare for bed, prepare to go to church instead
Get to church at 10:45 p.m.
Participate in pre-mass musical program from 11:15-midnight
Support the mass with musical ministray/leadership
When mass ends at 1:30 a.m., engage in social chat, drive home
Arriving home about 2 a.m. or later, and realizing you are far too jazzed to go to sleep, crack a bottle of “Christmas cheer” and calm in the alcoholic-existentialist manner until approximately 3:30 a.m.
Go to bed
Wake on Christmas Day about 8:30-9:00 a.m. Absolutely beat, and with no more than 6.5 hours’ sleep (usually more like 5.0), stumble through a few hours before saying, “Screw it, I’m having a beer, dear.”

There you have it: a raw, day-after download of what this (and many other) Christmas has meant to me. I wish you and yours the merriest of the day. Here on the east coast of the United States, about eight hours remain on Christmas Day. I hope however many you have (or had), they will be/were meaningful.

three coins

perhaps a three-week hiatus demands a post about Three

Every morning after I’ve got pants and shoes on, I grab “stuff for my pockets” which varies depending on whether I anticipate going out and needing a wallet. Sometimes I don’t think I’ll need American coinage either, but I always grab a lip balm stick and three coins:

Top to bottom: Eisenhower dollar, Mary Queen of the Universe, and a guardian angel coin. Oblique angle, right, shows the etching better. December 2025.

This ritual, this grabbing of physical reminders, has existed from before the morning prayer time I started recently. Because I am who I am, I consider the smallest coin first. For a period of time when people held postal mail in higher regard than now, and the Internet hadn’t become the ubiquitous realm where we encounter one another, I received a regular marketing mailer from some religious publishing house. Or maybe it was a charity looking for donors. Regardless, every mailer had affixed to its mail-in card a cheap metal coin with an angel embossed on it. “This is your Guardian Angel! Take this gift as a token of our appreciation!” the card said. And one day when yet another of these things showed up, I did. I don’t pretend to understand the exact nature of a guardian angel, but I can say with certainty there have been many times when something bad should have happened to me or when I for some reason refrained from saying something incredibly stupid, and I think a higher power might have influenced things. The coin reminds me there are forces greater than me at play in the universe, and I would do well to give them a few seconds each day to stop and appreciate them.

I picked up the middle coin in February 2013 when we visited Kissimmee, FL, spur-of-the-moment. I had a suddenly empty work calendar in my new line as contract-professional-for-hire, and Florida promised to be warmer than Raleigh. In most ways that count, it remains one of the two best times I’ve had in my half dozen or so visits. Due to the sudden nature of it, I planned little. We just schlepped around and on our final day discovered The Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe:

Interior, shrine to Mary, Queen of the Universe. Kissimmee, FL. February 2013.

Moved, I sought a small reminder of my experience there; hence the coin. In Roman Catholicism, the Marian tradition provides an important link for humans with God. As Mother of the Son of Man, God Incarnate, Mary becomes our symbolic mother just as Jesus is our brother. Thus our reverence for our mother, just as we revere our earthly mothers (hopefully). The coin reminds me of this link, of the powerful Family of God of which I am a wayward son, and of my brother-and-God, Jesus. Powerful stuff…and all in a few seconds!

My final coin (because it’s biggest) reminds of something far less religious, but no less meaningful. My father had an eclectic collection of coins he kept in a small metal box shaped and decorated as a 1940’s suitcase complete with travel stickers on it. He popped the occasional coin into it which he thought would be “worth something someday” or just out of curiosity. The U.S. Mint first struck an Eisenhower dollar in 1971 which likely explains why my father set this one aside. It also happened to be the first dollar coin minted since 1935. To me, however, it stands in for my father. I grab that coin and think about the oddity of putting 15-20 coins in a little kid’s bank and then doing nothing with it: he never took them out and looked at them, he never spoke about them, nothing. Only when he allowed my brother and me to dig around in his chest of drawers would we get to see what this little metal box held. In a larger sense, I see that profile of a bald president and think about my father in his final 20 years. I say a little prayer that he has found peace in the afterlife, a peace which eluded him here.

These few seconds…the little things we do which ground us.

Goodbye, Christmas

Tail end of Christmastide, 2023. January 2024.

Western Catholics have lost touch with the historical End of Christmas. Today, February 2nd, is that day, the 40th Day of Christmas (counting Christmas day as “1”). Christmastide, i.e., The Twelve Days of Christmas culminates at Epiphany; the period of time between Epiphany Sunday and the Presentation of the Lord (at the Temple) culminates at Candlemas (in the Western church). Traditionally some cultures leave Christmas decorations up through this day. As I may have stated previously, leaving Christmas decorations up past this day carries very bad luck so let’s not tempt that, okay?

I lean into this gradual easing into Ordinary Time. Though we’ve marked the 2nd and 3rd Sundays of Ordinary Time–we forget that usually this day falls midweek and doesn’t take precedence over a Sunday–we also tarry with the Christmas spirit through this date. I like that Jesus at 12 years of age stands at the threshold of adulthood. Time to put away the pleasantries of our Christmas-childhood and enter the reality of our calling.

Christmas Day 2024

An old ornament on a new tree. Kinda like us in 2024.

My wife and I first wish you all a Merry Christmas. At the very least we hope the seasonal aspects of peace, love, and deeply rooted joy enter your heart and soul. We still dare to hope these wishes also spread from the end of this season through 2025 and beyond. Despite this being my 71st Christmas and the accumulation of a freight train’s worth of cynicism, I’ve found hope and optimism remain surprisingly strong in my heart.

In the photo above, the ornament symbolizes all of that. Its pink and white frosted layers have many imperfections. The bulb has carried most of those imperfections since its creation, but also has lost some of its sparkle as grains have fallen off through the years. It nevertheless remains shiny where first it shone, and it draws the eye amid the more modern ornaments picked up during the years, the modern (and safer) lights, and the not-so-accurately-manufactured tree needles on our artificial tree. My parents gave me this ornament with a few others when I struck out on my own about 45 years ago. It can’t be younger than the 1950’s, the same as me. As it’s lost its sheen to poor handling, indifferent storage, and the jostling of eight moves during our marriage alone, it’s gained character and presence, standing out among the gaudier yet superficial touches of the newer decorations.

Ultimately, like this ornament, all of us arrive at this Now and this Here being who we are. We put on and take off habits every few years, but settle into most for decades. Beneath the cloak(s) of these habits lie the core of our beings. This Christmastide, I wish you what I wish for myself: a closer understanding of that. When we walk confidently with our Selves, we can accept the unique Others who walk with us on this path. Maybe then we’ll have a little more peace in this world. Maybe then we won’t shout in anger at each other. Maybe we can inch a little bit closer to the perfection buried in our hearts.

Postscript: I’ve kept the above thoughts on the vague, bordering-on-vacuous-greeting card level because I don’t want to push an agenda at you. These thoughts underlie all spiritual beliefs. Even those who believe in nothing but organic humanism (just the brain, baby, then you’re gone!) have a spiritual belief–they believe there aren’t any. To these and to all, I say, “Acknowledge the Self. Recognize it in Others. This forms a bedrock more fundamental than the trappings of religions and philosophy. We all could get behind this concept and make a better world in the process.

True thoughts for false spring

Imagine I’m drinking this–because I am. February 2024.

American football has ended its seeming stranglehold on the domestic sports scene. A surprisingly close game last night between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs kept me up to the end. That’s pretty unusual. I quit watching football decades ago. My interest diminished with the demise of an old version of the Seattle Seahawks, the one with Jim Zorn and Steve Largent. Or perhaps it diminished with my renewed interest in baseball. Whatever.

For a baseball fan, football feels about as welcome as your ex showing up at your next wedding. Baseball has just introduced itself at the beginning of April when the National Football League holds it’s draft. When the season gets going and the annual draft of new baseball talent occurs in early June, the NFL starts rattling its sabers about pre-camp workouts. Baseball gets some clarity as good teams rise to the top, bad teams falter, and the 2024 trade deadline approaches–and the NFL opens its training camps! All of these boorish events pale to this: baseball heads into its final month to determine the postseason, a five-week celebration of near-daily baseball games ending in the World Championship, and the NFL opens its season. In a pragmatic but depressing capitulation to reality, MLB mostly avoids holding postseason games on Sundays when most NFL games occur.

(And why do we call it football? Players’ feet only intentionally touch the ball to punt the ball away or kick the ball through the goalposts. This likely reflects my ignorance, but go with me here: players hand off, run, pass, and catch the ball. Now that European née global sport has appropriately called itself football!)

Ah, but for a few glorious weeks baseball reigns supreme. Football retires from the stage and lets the sport-formerly-known-as-America’s-sport, baseball, back into into the leading role it once occupied. Collegiate basketball intrudes, true, during March Madness, but it displays the genteel manners one would expect from amateur athletics. Baseball spring training games occur in the afternoon; NCAA games occur primarily in the evening. It crowns a champion during the first week of the baseball season, turning in that assignment a week late just as college students will, and bows itself from the stage. And the professionals in the NBA? Who cares? Their interminable playoff schedule will just be starting in mid-April, a two-month slog that ends in the middle of June.

Baseball and football play nice once each year. Football crowns a champ just prior to the start of baseball’s spring training. For six weeks all baseball fans think one of two things:

My team could win the World Series this year!
My team might not be as bad as it looks!

Hope springs, regardless. Thank you, Super Bowl; thank you, Spring.

I know more cold weather remains a very real possibility. By the weekend we will see temperatures at or below freezing. Yet the ephemeral forecasts from various sources promise me I’ll see more early spring temps than I will not, and that’s something. Very soon the star magnolia will bloom, daring the other trees to follow suit. Judging by last year, we’re running a bit late. Here’s a photo from February 10th last year:

Perhaps you can tell from the photo that the star magnolia (all magnolias?) blossoms prior to putting out leaves. Our purple magnolia does this too. Those little buds appear in the fall, winter like a butterfly’s chrysalis, and then get a bit fuzzier and bigger as their imminent bursting approaches. Most pop out together, but some appear late. March sees only a few:

Like the Star of Bethlehem in Christian scripture, the star magnolia signals the rebirth of our plant world around the small plot of land we manage.

Tomorrow goes by Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday and some German name which I can’t pronounce or spell and which means Doughnut Day. All of them imply, “hey, we need to party and indulge, because tomorrow begins Lent.” Unfortunately (kind of) Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine’s Day. We’ve decided our party tomorrow will stand in for Valentine’s Day. While we nibble on a few berries, nuts, maybe a piece or two of cheese, I will prepare calas or rice beignets using this recipe. I’m looking forward to it. I love involved, authentic-in-spirit recipes, and this Anson Mills recipe promises all of that. I’ve not purchased their rice or pastry flour; we’ll hope the expensive Carolina rice I did purchase will suffice. Dinner, which we’ll start working on after our late morning calas in at least a desultory way, will be Anson Mills’ Roasted Stuffed Quail for Two with Madeira Sauce. We did not spring for the mail-order quail when we first planned this as a New Year’s Eve meal. Our local grocer carried them. Nor do we have madeira, let alone a 5-year one, and I’m not buying one for 3 tablespoons of recipe use! Some marsala and sherry will suffice. We’ll set some simply prepared asparagus next to the quail and toast our near-30-year relationship.

As lovely as that may (or may not) sound, it’s Lent which occupies my mind today and for the past few. One needs to prepare for Lent. Arriving to Ash Wednesday, opening one’s bleary, I-partied-too-much eyes, and arbitrarily picking something to give up for Lent represents a knee-jerk response to the liturgical meaning of Lent which undercuts it. Sure, you can give up caffeine or alcohol or that favorite candy or whatever because, “that’s what I always do”–and Lent will mean about as much as the thought you put into it. One’s spiritual life basically runs on cruise control (at whatever speed you’ve set) if this represents your approach.

Alternatively, a person in touch with one’s relationship to the Presence which animated this Universe–which created life (a scientifically provable proposition which I will address in a future post), which appears to have imbued all of us with a portion of Its spirit, and which in a way not describable to me, appears to care about us–seeks with initiative and purpose to pledge oneself to one or more practices during Lent, then that person approaches the mystery of Easter with (hopefully) a clearer insight to understanding that mystery. If nothing else, they approach in a better ‘spiritual plane’ which even the non-religious believe to be a good thing.

I have for more than a decade attempted to set one practice each for the physical, the mental, and the spiritual/emotional. (I know, I know. Let’s debate the conflation of “spiritual/emotional” some other time.) This year my practices do not need to be hidden, as they sometimes do to be authentic. I plan to…

Go to the gym thrice weekly as we originally intentioned a year ago. We’ve attempted to restart the gym practice since a falling off in the holidays to limited success. I also have a more private concern here which isn’t so much a practice as a focus on what I’m already doing.
I’m going to begin reading the Bible with an emphasis on two things: the Pentateuch (the first five books) and the four gospels. I’m not sure of the juxtaposition. About seven to ten years ago I used a guide to a first-time reading of the Bible in which one read Genesis, Mark, a few other books–it gave a representation of the Bible overall, including a book from the prophets, a couple apostolic books, etc. I liked it, but I’m ready for a bit more.
Emotionally/spiritually? I’m still not sure on this one. I think my fledging effort to be more social will come into play. Of the varieties of introversion, I’m the one who avoids social gatherings among other things. This will be ….interesting.

Lent means more than Advent to me. Perhaps the focus on penance/introspection? I can definitively say there are days which anchor me to my spiritual pursuits. Ash Wednesday and its implication of Lent is one.

Our spiritual life, and therefore our inspirations, remains in this world. A focus on Jesus, Buddha, or whomever, to the exclusion of the physical world insulates us from our reality. The light poles and cell towers of our world inhabit the day-to-day milieu where we must perfect ourselves as humans. Like this photo, we must see the beauty in the context of the mundane. Ash Wednesday 2023.

Epiphany 2024

Boy, do I miss the Musical Heritage Society.

A very happy Epiphany to y’all. I’ll refer you to many other sources online which will explain all the nuances of the day–suffice to say it generally is associated with the Three Wise Men/Three Kings who visited the Christ Child a bit after his birth. Think gold, frankincense, and myrrh. For me it means I listen to Amahl and the Night Visitors, a one-act opera by Gian Carlo Menotti. In it, Amahl is a young boy, lame, who no longer watches sheep because his mother and he are so poor that she has sold the sheep to buy food. There is no father. They are visited by the three wise men who are on their way to Bethlehem. Amahl’s mother is unable to withstand temptation with all that gold, and she takes a piece whereupon she is caught. All is quickly forgiven, Amahl experiences a miracle healing, and he receives his mother’s permission to accompany the three kings on the rest of their journey so that he can pay homage to Jesus (and presumably give thanks for being healed).

This opera amazes me, not because of its performance (which I love) but because in 1951 NBC commissioned it, by the “director of NBC’s new opera programming” no less! Imagine that. Today reality TV masquerades as intentional, thoughtful programming; 70 years ago, NBC not only telecast an opera but commissioned it. I have listened to this on or around Epiphany every year for more than 30 years after I purchased it from the Musical Heritage Society in the late 80’s. My version is the 1986 London production which occurred under Menotti’s supervision, and which I digitized during the Great Musical Digitization Project I performed on my music from 2006-2014. (Eight years? In my defense there was a lot of music, and I kept buying more. In fact, I have a few hundred recordings which never made it, mostly jazz and classical.) Imagine my distress when I couldn’t locate this file on my computer today. Something must have happened–files do corrupt for various reasons–and I deleted it? I had to ‘make do’ with the version I found on Tidal which featured the original cast of the NBC telecast shown on Christmas Eve in 1951. I couldn’t determine if it was the actual broadcast or just “featured” those performers. If you go looking for it, the director of this recording was Thomas Schippers. It was very good, but not as good as the one I purchased in 1987 or 1988 from MHS. The latter has clearer vocals which make the words easier to understand. In my opinion, it also features a bit more drama in the performances.

This is an opera for children because it tries to recapture my own childhood. You see, when I was a child I lived in Italy, and in Italy we have no Santa Claus. I suppose that Santa Claus is much too busy with American children to be able to handle Italian children as well. Our gifts were brought to us by the Three Kings, instead.

I actually never met the Three Kings—it didn’t matter how hard my little brother and I tried to keep awake at night to catch a glimpse of the Three Royal Visitors, we would always fall asleep just before they arrived. But I do remember hearing them. I remember the weird cadence of their song in the dark distance; I remember the brittle sound of the camel’s hooves crushing the frozen snow; and I remember the mysterious tinkling of their silver bridles.
Gian-Carlo Menotti, from the liner notes to the original cast recording (Wikipedia)

I miss MHS. It would usually take obscure or under-appreciated (but very decent) recordings, add its own liner notes, and press them. In addition to Amahl and the Night Visitors I purchased many wonderful albums of Christmas music alone: A Tapestry of Carols by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band, listed first because it is my absolute favorite Christmas album; Christmas Carols by the Scottish National Orchestra, rated by several critics as one of the best Christmas albums ever; Christmas Now Is Drawing Nigh by Sneaks Noyse, an attempt to recreate what the carols sounded like centuries ago; Carols from New College by the Choir of New College, Oxford; Merry Christmas by the Vienna Boys Choir; and A Festival of Christmas which appears to be a combination of two commercial albums, one by the Huddersfield Choral Society and one by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

And so we bid goodbye to Christmastide and Epiphany. In a moment, I shall pray for all those who enter our house and chalk that blessing on the lintel of our front door. I’m not worried about getting the decorations down before sundown: they will start to come down tomorrow. And we will segue into Ordinary Time, an odd naming for the time which is neither Lent/Easter- or Advent/Christmas-oriented. Bless you all who come through the virtual doorway to this blog.

On the First Day of Christmas…

…this blog gave to me…a discourse meant to bore me…

[a pastiche of thoughts as Christmas begins]

NC Chinese Lantern Festival 2023. December 2023.

Yes, we’re into the Twelve Days of Christmas. Generally Twelvetide runs December 25th through the very end of January 5th, Epiphany beginning on January 6th. (This information primarily comes from Wikipedia.) The Council of Tours created it in 567 AD–and yes, I’m using AD not CE on purpose. For various reasons some Eastern churches celebrate the twelve days starting with the day after Christmas.

Our world generally has forgotten the distinction of seasons, of singular dates. Seasons orient around only the salient events. We don’t appreciate the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas–hell, between Halloween and Christmas–as anything but a lead-up to Christmas Day. I don’t think you have to be a Christian to acknowledge that there just might be something happening between those two dates nearly 60 days apart (besides Thanksgiving). As a Christian, it mystifies me when I try to figure out what Christmas means to the non-religious or non-spiritual person. It seems an inchoate, indefinite span of peace-love-dove (and don’t forget the shopping), marked primarily with traditions whose meanings have been lost to time. Ah, well. This old guy still enjoys pausing to remember all the examples of saints on All Saints Day and all the dearly departed on All Souls. I like to build up to Thanksgiving the way we used to, focusing on the stories (true or not) about how the day’s traditions came into being. I spend the days immediately after Thanksgiving focused on Advent, leaning into the promises of Christmas rather than a bustling, have-I-got-everything-done race to the 25th. This actually handicaps me because I tend to not get things done such as preparing the Christmas newsletter, setting up decorations outdoors, or getting the tree up. On the other hand, I don’t race to do so. Christmas starts on the 25th, and we are in celebration mode now for 12 days. The tree stays up until January 6th; the decorations too.

Christmas Day started at midnight with mass (see here). Two sleep-deprived adults, who retired at 3:30 a.m. and woke about 5.5 hours later, reached for adult beverages sooner than is rational. Fine brews, expense-be-damned, dominated the day: Duvel’s namesake offering; Chimay’s Grand Reserve (the blue label), inexplicably available from Costco every year about this time; N’ice Chouffe from Brasserie D’Achouffe; and Oakspire from New Belgium, a deep amber ale somewhat like a Scottish one, aged in bourbon barrels from Four Roses Distillery. My wife shies away from the dark end of the beer scale; when I shifted to the Oakspire, she went with Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale, which has evolved over the past 20 years into a red IPA. If you know anything about these beers, you’ll realize we didn’t have a lot of cares as we approached our festive but subdued meal. I offered up a standard ‘guy meal’ of wedge salad with a homemade blue cheese dressing, thin slices from a 3-inch thick ribeye (seared and minimally roasted), baked russets, and broccolini with pecan butter. (No we don’t do dessert. It’s just a thing.)

My wife and I quit exchanging presents about five years ago. We’ve found Christmas posseses a peculiar dynamic when you don’t have children. You’ve never built up that tradition of mesmerizing the children on Christmas Day. You’ve never sacrificed all year long for those children, welcoming a bit of liberal spending to get a few things you’ve wanted throughout that year. We finally acknowledged an obvious truth: we get what we want when we want it. (Example: my wife accidentally soaked her tablet on December 17th. We replaced it with a purchase three days later, and she set the new one up less than a week after she drowned the previous one. Retired people understand the concept of cash flow.) Christmas gifts are a superfluous thing, coals to Newcastle. Instead we work on intangibles such as vacation plans, entertainment, planning our elevated meals for Twelvetide, and…each other.

That’s where things stand on Boxing Day. We’re looking forward to a near-fortnight of special meals peppering our evening meal plans. Lurking like aspiring actors in the casting office: stuffed quail; a NYD menu of pork, collards, and black-eyed peas with a side of cornbread; a re-run of the Sicilian Swordfish Stew from Christmas Eve; and perhaps some holiday tamales. Okay, no, I’m not going to the effort of tamales, but enchiladas doesn’t sound half bad.

Merry Christmas, y’all!

Tag: Christianity