Opening up a can.

What's the best way to open a can?

Seems like a simple question, but canned food has been around since 1811, and there have been many means to open those cans in the last 212 years. 

Do you prefer the standard handheld opener with the wheel perpendicular to the top of the can? One of the newer variety with the wheel horizontal to the lid, so you can slice the whole lid off? Do you insist that Spam and other ham products had the right idea, including a key with each can for easy opening? Or do you refuse to get anything comestible in cans but liquids? And if so, do you demand pop-tops or do you use an old-fashioned "church key" type opener?

Some will say nothing beats an electric can opener. But even then you have choices. There are the kind my mom used to have that held and rotated the can as the blade bit into the metal. Then there are the mini ones that actually go around the top on their own. 

If you are a purist, you might like the levered handheld item that had a crescent-shaped blade on top to work around the can. This was considered a safety improvement over the real old-fashioned methods. 

A search for "can opener" on Google Patents yields "About 16,520 results". Goodness gracious me, there seems to be a lot of effort and thought put into a simple question of getting the contents of the can from the inside to the outside. 

Why do I bring this up? Because you know and I know that if we had a bunch of people together in a room and had this discussion, there'd be no agreement on the answer as to which can opener is "best" -- we'd be lucky to get a 50% majority for any one type. And that's on a subject that really isn't a big deal. How can we ever expect to agree on anything serious? Between conflicting visions of what is best and conflicting ideas of how to get there, it's amazing we ever get anything decided at all. 

And this is why I firmly believe humanity is incapable of achieving any kind of utopic society: We're just too ornery. 

Other animals can agree on everything. Every wolf would agree that a piece of meat is good. Every chipmunk might be happy in an identical hole. But it’s not the way we are. To paraphrase from Adam Rex, every cow you meet is the world's greatest expert on being a cow. Every bumblebee knows 100% of everything about being a bumblebee. But people? We have no idea what we're doing a lot of the time. In groups, even less of the time. 

What got me down this road was thinking about Advent, about the Bible, about what we have been given to learn and live by the faith, and I thought maybe it would be nice if we'd had more. But then I figured some people would demand still more, some way less; some would want something different; something more concrete or alternately more artistic; some would want it in blue or black or stripes. In other words, no one thing would seem to be a perfect fit on its face to all of us, even if it really is a perfect fit as we dig deeper into it. 

But man, we sure are malcontents. It keeps us striving for more and better, but it also can get in the way of enjoying what we have.

By the way -- skip the electronics; just more wasted counter space. Handheld classic with the perpendicular wheel. You wanna fight over it?  

Oopsie! Church edition.

Advent is under way, and I was glad to be in church yesterday for it. It took a little intestinal fortitude to do so, mainly because the week before I had sorta put the congregation in danger of seeing something attached to my intestines. That is to say, my fly was open and I didn't realize it until I got home. 

When I was a kid, an incident like that would have made me want to crawl under the bed and stay there until, well, my current age. A sure sign of maturity is that it isn't like that now. Not that I don't kick myself for old mistakes -- I most certainly do, usually when I awaken in the middle of the night -- but silly things like forgetting to XYZ before leaving the house? Not so much. 

It's unclear whether my exposure was even visible. I had been wearing a drapey shirt (a shent, I guess), and I was wearing black undies rather than white (which I might have been, as I do own a couple of pairs of classic tighties). That is to say, the black shorts may have been hard to notice even if they were not covered by my shirttails. 

No one said anything. I think the deacon gave me a look, but he's a retired cop so he probably gives everyone that look anyway. 

Besides, it'd be far from the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen in church. I've seen a lector who accidently started reading the Gospel (the priest or deacon has to do that); I've seen people drop the Host (big no-no); I've seen a nun and a priest trying to get the symbolic robe on a newly baptized adult and working at cross-purposes until it looked like they were taking a hostage; and of course -- an all-time classic -- I heard a lector introduce a reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippines. Wherever there are people, there can be embarrassing stuff. A little flagging fly ain't much of anything. 

Really, I've seen far more embarrassing things per capita everywhere else. Schools, clubs, bars, offices, public transportation, supermarkets, press conferences -- pound for pound, these have far more embarrassing incidents than church. It's just the reverence in church that makes them stand out more.

Anyway, Advent is here, and that's nice. I feel like I'm well behind my neighbors. They all seem to have completed all their decorations by last Thursday. But I'm not going to rush myself in getting the job done. That's how you wind up hanging off the roof by a string of lights. Talk about embarrassing!

Abraham.

Advent begins today. It has me thinking of a much more ancient section of the Bible, though. 

When I was a young uneducated moron, the only thing I knew about the Sacrifice of Isaac from Genesis 22 was a Saturday Night Live sketch and Bob Dylan's song "Highway 61 Revisited." I learned more later. 

For what is a key moment in the history of human and divine relations, the whole story is quick, only 10 verses in any standard Christian Bible: 

Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test and said to him: Abraham! “Here I am!” he replied.

Then God said: Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.

Early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey, took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac, and after cutting the wood for the burnt offering, set out for the place of which God had told him.

On the third day Abraham caught sight of the place from a distance.

Abraham said to his servants: “Stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go on over there. We will worship and then come back to you.”

So Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two walked on together,

Isaac spoke to his father Abraham. “Father!” he said. “Here I am,” he replied. Isaac continued, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

“My son,” Abraham answered, “God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.” Then the two walked on together.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he bound his son Isaac, and put him on top of the wood on the altar.

Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.

But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered.

“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the angel. “Do not do the least thing to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold from me your son, your only one.”

Abraham looked up and saw a single ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.

Depending on who's doing the reading, the sacrifice of Isaac may the craziest or greatest action ever contemplated. We know at this point in the Bible that Isaac is the long-hoped-for son of his father and mother, one granted by God in their old age, when all hope had been lost. And now God wants Abraham to kill Isaac? And Abraham goes right along with it, right up until his hand is about to strike the killing blow? 

Surely anyone doing that now would be thought crazy, and rightly so. (Those of us who believe in the story think that it's very unlikely God would do the same exact challenge twice.) 

After thinking about it for a while, a few years ago I came to a realization that undoubtedly many before me had as well. God wasn't testing Abraham here; He knows everything, and He knew Abraham would follow God's command in this greatest test. But Abraham had to know that his obedience would go to any lengths. After this, Abraham never need doubt his devotion, or the strength of it, again. Most of us do, and a lot.

As the Bible is intended to recount a history rather than tell a modern tale, we don't know much about Abraham's (or anyone's) inner life during such tribulations. What was he thinking? If it were me, I might have thought, I will do as God commands, but I will lie down next to Isaac as the fire rises and be a second sacrifice. 

Or I'd just leave it to my wife to kill me when I got home after I told her what I had done. Sarah was no mouse.

Jesus's followers show again and again how hard it is when God calls one to complete obedience. Andrew is not known for much, but when called he dropped his nets immediately and followed. Peter needed proof. The rich young man followed the Commandments, but when told to sell all he had and follow Jesus, he turned away, devastated. When Jesus told his followers they would have to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood (!!!!), there was mass desertion. These stories make perfect sense to us, and they also throw Abraham's devotion into stark relief. He became the father of a great people, because he was completely obedient to God.

What, I wonder, am I do say if I'm being called to give up something I truly love -- maybe the only thing I truly love? 

I don't know the answer, and I've been thinking about it a lot.

Fred's Book Club: The Work of Forgiveness.

Greetings, fellow readers! Welcome to the Humpback Writers feature, our Wednesday (a.k.a. Hump Day) entry that looks at books and lets them look back at us. The writers may not actually have any humps, but the books have spines, so there is that.

Today we're preparing for Christmas, and while Advent is a season of joy, it's also a time for examination of conscience and learning to love our brethren. This will be helpful if we're going to be stuck with our brethren all Christmas Day at Aunt Tilly's house. But forgiveness is often more than we can stand to do, especially if the wound has been very deep. What is to be done?

Today's book is one of the smallest in our vast collection, at 71 pages, but is meant to help us in this work of forgiveness. Joan Mueller, Ph.D., is a professor of theology at Creighton University in Omaha, and also a professor of Christian spirituality. Forgiveness is one of the gigantic pillars of Christianity, something we all need and we're expected to give, so we might think Dr. Mueller has some useful thoughts. 

Forgiveness: Three Minute Reflections on Redeeming Life's Most Difficult Moments is a helpful book for those seeking to forgive and those seeking forgiveness. It is a series of meditations, broken into four sections of seven each, that can be literally read in three minutes. Each has a scriptural reading, a thought connected to it, and a spiritual exercise to help the reader. The exercises can take a lot longer than three minutes, of course, depending on how much thought we want or need to apply to them. But taken along the way, all can be useful, and if done one a day, the book can be completed in a month. I won't say painlessly -- forgiveness can be painful for everyone involved. But grudges can hurt a lot more.

Here's a sample page:

You may hate this kind of stuff. Dismiss it as nonsense or happy horse-hockey (or worse). Well, so do I, much of the time, and I used to all of the time. But I approached this with an open mind and I believe it was good for me.  

I picked this book up in the lobby of my Catholic church, when some of the publishers from New City Press came down for a visit. New City Press is not a Catholic publisher, but they seek to help any Christian or anyone looking into Christianity or anyone who needs to find faith. (And Hyde Park, New York, where they are based, is not far from where I live.) I wanted to support the small press, so I looked for a book that might be of interest, and this one surely was. I think it did help me make peace with some of the people against which I held grudges, even if they didn't know I was still mad. 

Finding peace with an angry world and the people in it can surely be a daunting task, but one particularly good to do, or at least try to do, at Christmastime. I thank Professor Mueller for her book, and New City Press for bringing it to my attention. But I'm still a work in progress.

The just man.

As every Catholic knows, or ought to, Advent is a period of hope, not penitence like Lent. But Advent and Lent are both periods of preparation. Today we mark the third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday, as a reminder that our expectation is coming near, that our hope may become stronger as we wait for the child in the manger who is God among us. 

Which brings me to St. Joseph, which you may recall is my Confirmation saint and a model for the worker and the head of the Holy Family. Look at it this way -- his wife is perfect and his foster son is God, yet he's the head of the household. Must be a pretty special guy.

And that is why I am cheered beyond measure that Pope Francis has proclaimed this to be the Year of St. Joseph:

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2020 / 04:08 am MT (CNA).- Pope Francis announced a Year of St. Joseph Tuesday in honor of the 150th anniversary of the saint’s proclamation as patron of the Universal Church. 

The year begins Dec. 8, 2020, and concludes on Dec. 8, 2021, according to a decree authorized by the pope. 

The decree said that Francis had established a Year of St. Joseph so that “every member of the faithful, following his example, may strengthen their life of faith daily in the complete fulfillment of God’s will.” 

I can't think of a better saint to look to at this miserable juncture in history than St. Joseph. He was a stalwart man, a provider, a protector, a hard worker, obedient to God and God's law, a just man, faithful to the end. He is the antithesis of everything we've endured in 2020 -- the constant lies, the destruction of businesses by our political class, the violent assaults on innocents, the attacks on families and faith from our cultural elites. The pope went on to write, “Our world today needs fathers." (A recent analysis in First Things would agree with that.) "It has no use for tyrants who would domineer others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power with destruction.” 

This may be the first time I've been thrilled by anything coming from the Holy Father. 

I sure wasn't thrilled by the 2020 Vatican Playskool Nativity.

Pope Francis's silence over the horrors of China's oppression of religious groups, even Catholics, has frustrated me; his attacks on our president and our country have annoyed me; his endless taunts about "opening" the church to modernism -- that send the cardinals flocking to explain that what the pope said wasn't what he meant -- has worn me out. But this time I think he knocked it out of the park. 

Have hope, and if you're of a bent to do so, ask St. Joseph to pray for us. We need his example and his prayers to try to right the mess we're in now. Let us not be afraid, but rejoice and be brave.

First Sunday of Advent.

I like this "Advent in Two Minutes" video from the Paulist Fathers at Busted Halo. "Faith shared joyfully" is their mission statement, and you get a little taste of it here.

 

I'm a fan of Advent. As the video stresses, it is a season of hope, unlike Lent, which is a season of repentance. People do give up things or take on good things during Advent, but that's not considered a necessity -- although it would certainly be nice to plan to be friendlier in this Advent, especially at a time when lockdowns and riots and politics have us at one another's throats. 

As for Loving Thy Neighbor, my Advent Eve Day got off to a poor start. (NB: There is no such thing as Advent Eve Day, although Advent started with the Vigil Mass yesterday.) My dog-hating neighbor, the cable thief destined to be led out of work with a raincoat over his head one day, was putting up wreaths on his illegal fence that divides our properties. He has not spoken to me in years except to yell at me once when his wife was not home to scold him. It just so happened that my dogs both had to water the lawn that afternoon -- I didn't even know Wicked Neighbor was there, but they spotted him right away. Probably the stink of wickedness on him. 

Anyway, Junior Varsity dog Nipper was on a leash with me, so he stayed by my side, but Senior Varsity dog Tralfaz, all 120 pounds of furry Fazzy fury, trotted up to the fence and unleashed a volley of barks. I didn't see the man's reaction, although it would have been satisfying to know he'd soiled his Fruit of the Looms. 

I called Fazzy away and got him focused on his task -- pee -- but gave him lots of praise and an extra-large treat for scaring the big jerk. 

So you see what I'm dealing with here, and I mean me, not that guy. Immanuel Kant famously said that "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made," and that's me down to my socks. 

Still, today is a day when hope starts again, and maybe I can hope and pray to turn the other cheek in the future. And not gloat when my huge dog frightens someone who really deserves it. 

Smell like the King.

A few years back I told you how you can smell like the Boss. And I've even told you how you can smell like the President. But now we're going far beyond that -- how to smell like the King.

Today is the last Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Catholic church, the end of the Liturgical Year, and on this day we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. And today I have his soap. Sort of. Not really.

Indigo Wild sells a variety of goat milk soaps in the Zum Bar line, in weird scents that include Juniper-Fir, Clove-Orange, and the inevitable Patchouli-Ylang Ylang. But they also sell this, the Frankincense-Myrrh.

Myrrh is mentioned several times in the Bible, sixteen times in the New American Bible (rev. ed.), reflecting its importance as a valuable resin, used for medicinal purposes and also as incense and a means of anointing the dead. Frankincense is similarly used for incense. Matthew 2:11, relating Jesus's birth, states

and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Thus, the gifts of the Magi are forever joined with the narrative of the Nativity.

Now, I've been curious about these gifts since I was a boy and learned all five verses to "We Three Kings." I knew what gold was, but what were these other substances? The verses explain their threefold purpose in the threefold purpose of Jesus, as king (gold), deity (frankincense), and sacrifice (myrrh). But what did these two weird nouns refer to? And how did they smell? You can't get that out of an encyclopedia.

Well, I still can't tell you how they smell individually, although I wanted to at least get a clue. I winced and paid the price to buy the Zum Bar, which cost more than a bundle of Zest bars. And before I got home, I can tell you this: As substances refined for burial of the dead, who famously do not smell like a bed of roses, they work pretty darn good.

Not that I had any dead with me, but that little bar of soap, way in the hatch of the car, could be detected from the driver's seat. It's not unpleasant, but it is powerful. Pungent is one word. "Deep, sweet, and woodsy aromas" is how Indigo Wild describes it. I'd say it is a woodsy, peppery scent, spicy, sugary the way maple is, but rich and fruity. It put me in mind of the resin in logs when Dad and I would cut up the ol' firewood, but a billion times stronger. As I write it is wrapped in the plastic bag from the store, and you can still smell it when you walk by. Try that with a bar of Yardley.

Frankly, I'm afraid to use it. I don't think people would smell me go by and think, There's one biblical dude! I think they might think I was dead. Or that I'm a serious dead head, trying to cover up the Mary Jane stink. When I was a teenager, that's the only thing I ever saw incense used for. The Zum Bar Web site doesn't really assure me that potheads with money are not their primary customers.

So maybe I'll actually try a shower with it one day that I'm not leaving the house. Even then I'm afraid the dogs will not recognize my smell under all that and go for my throat. Then I might be dead! And I'd be pre-anointed, so I'd have that going for me.

One last note: Jesus did not use myrrh as soap, or perhaps at all. It's suggested by some that the gifts Mary and Joseph received from the Magi were used for money, for the years in which they hid from Herod in Egypt, but we don't know. Also, there's not a lot of descriptions of bathing in the New Testament (not counting baptism), but the one time we see Jesus anointed with expensive oil during his ministry, it contains nard (according to Mark 14); nard, or spikenard, is said to come from the plant Nardostachys jatamansi, not Commiphora abyssinica like myrrh or Boswellia like frankincense. When Jesus had died, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) say nothing about his body being anointed, and in fact that's why the women who found the empty tomb on Sunday were going there. But John 19 says "Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds," and Jesus was bound "with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom." Just FYI.

On the first day of Advent...

My true love gave to me....

Nuttin'.

I've seen all kinds of Advent calendars. I think we had one once when I was a kid, one of those cardboard things with really cheap chocolate behind the doors. I don't remember following it every day, and I'm willing to bet that some kid -- possibly me -- busted into it when no one was looking and ate all the lousy chocolate. Not the kind of thing I'd do normally, as I've always been craftier than that, but I may have been desperate. You'd have to be to eat that stuff.

Other Advent calendars I've seen have been very elaborate, very well built, suitable for reuse year after year. You'd be obliged to come up with something good for that kind of calendar. A plain Hershey's Kiss behind the door would be gauche. That's at least Ghirardelli-level craftsmanship. (You can still get some beautifully made ones these days if you're willing to come across with some scratch.)

I have to say it, but Funko's Harry Potter Advent Calendar may be the lousiest excuse for an Advent Calendar I've ever seen. There's nothing Christmassy about it. I know they celebrated Christmas at Hogwarts, but -- snowflake-flecked box aside -- from this product you'd be excused for thinking they were just a pack o' pagans in the wizarding world.

I thought I'd do an Advent calendar for you right on this site, dear reader; every day until Christmas I would post some candy that, through the magic of Christmas and the Internet, would appear on your screen and in your mouth. Unfortunately, there were three small flaws with that plan. 1) I started this project today, December 2, and while that may be the first day of Advent, most Advent calendars are numbered 1 to 24, with the intent of opening a little door each day in December. And 2) It doesn't work; I'm not Willy Wonka. And 3) This is the only candy I had available.

And I don't think you look that desperate.

Sing!

Advent begins tonight with the vigil Mass, and you know what that means:

Twenty-three shopping days until Christmas!

Moreover, it means that a lot of our friends who haven't been to church since Easter will start trickling back, and God bless them for it. When I was a young chap about town I would go to church once a week -- on Wednesdays, at lunch. I was trying to become a Christian, but I wasn't going to let that dictate my weekend plans. So honestly, not throwing stones here.

Catholics are pretty tough on these things; if you don't make the days of obligation, which include every single Sunday (or the Saturday vigil), that's a serious sin that requires Confession. In my pre-Catholic days I didn't know that, or much else, really. It's been a long journey.

But I didn't mean to write about that. What I meant to write about is SINGING!

I'm sure I've noted this before in this blog, but even in Advent when the hymns are often familiar Christmas tunes, northeastern Catholics hate to sing in church. That's mainly the case everywhere, though, not just in church. Not like church is different because we're belting out the Latin. For the most part, if you expect us northeast Catholics to do any public singing, we have to get our drink on and be dragged to karaoke, and even then there's a good chance we'll sneak out the door before our turn comes up at the mike. We look at Baptist services with a mixture of awe and horror. Look how faithful they are! Look how happy it makes them! Why aren't they dying of embarrassment? 

I guess we know that most of us don't sing particularly well, but really, it's no excuse. As one of our musical directors says, the Good Lord gave her that voice and she's gonna give it right back to Him. Of course, she sings like an angel, so it's not the best advice coming from her.

I've had compliments on my singing, which is really gratifying, but I'm still shy about the church singing. When no one else in your pew is warbling, you get self-conscious. Worse, I've been known (by me) to screw up the words even on things I know quite well, because of under- or overfocus. It's sad when my mouth trips right out of the gate, and I wind up spewing

O come all ye faceful
Troyful and trumpumpant
O come ye all come ye
To Bebblehem

And then I think of the poor late Linda McCartney, wife of Beatle Paul, who got caught out in 1990 on concert audio released by some sound guy connected with a Wings show. For you kiddies who don't remember Linda, or Wings, or the Beatles, let's just say that a lot of people used to accuse her of being a no-talent who would have been a nobody if she hadn't married Paul, and this audio track seemed to confirm it. Had the Internet been around then it would have been everywhere in a day. As it was, a lot of radio stations played it. I heard it because I listened to the Imus in the Morning show in those days, and they made a lot of hay out of it. (Remember their slogan: "We're not happy until you're not happy.") Here it is:

Paul McCartney's defense of Linda's substandard background vocals is that she was dancing, and he released video to show she was busy and not focused on vocals. No one's singing is great while they're running around.

But I think of that sometimes when I'm screwing up words to the Gloria or a standard hymn, or just singing like crap. Maybe my voice is blending with the other singers, but God sure hears me. I'd like to do a good job, but my mind wanders like a toddler in a toy store. Some days my voice sounds like I swallowed a frog and his croak got stuck on the way down. But I generally try to do my best, and I hope everyone else will too this year.

We used to have an old-timer in our church who could not sing a note, but it wasn't for lack of trying. He was awful, and he was loud. I thought he was fantastic. I still do.

Black Sunday fell two days too soon?

Well, here it is, the day after Thanksgiving, and I hope you have not been trampled to death. If so, please inform me immediately, and I shall send my condolences to your next of kin.

The stores seem to invite this. What is a "doorbuster" if not an invitation to break in and grab everything? Like advertising for barbarians. This is the mall, not the Bastille. These stores are asking for trouble.

A few years ago on the old blog I christened the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as Puce Wednesday. I think my idea was that it would darken to a nice festive brown on Thursday and go all black for Friday. My original 2013 piece went down with the Blog.com Website, but I retained pictorial proof of the research I did on the rainy Wednesday before Thanksgiving at the Macy's mother ship in Herald Square:

Checkin' out the merch

After Friday we transfer out of the colors and straight into no-euphemism mercantilism. Saturday is Small Business Saturday, when we repent of buying stuff at Walmart and Target and buy from the local knuckleheads instead of national chain stores run by local knuckleheads. Monday of course is Cyber Monday, the day we shop at the office while we're supposed to be working. 

I guess we get Sunday off from shopping, maybe to digest leftovers. If you're so inclined, the first Sunday after Thanksgiving is often the First Sunday in Advent, but not in 2017; this year December has five Sundays, and Advent doesn't start until December 3.

So I guess that's our list of assignments for the weekend. Please be safe out there and don't put life and/or limb on the line for the sake of some bargain. Your people need you more than they need more stuff, no matter what your teenager may say.

(P.S.: Classic title reference -- hi, Stiiv!)

The Christmas loser.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, so I can't deny it anymore: Christmas is upon us.

In fact, the guys on either side of me have already got up their Christmas decorations. So does a guy around the corner. So does a guy up the block. I still have my Thanksgiving stuff up.

You know what that makes me?

The Christmas loser.

"You're the Christmas loser, Fred!"

It would be nice if I could get the Advent wreath out, but that would involve, you know, getting the Advent wreath out. This would require the usual 9-step process of: 1) Finding the Advent wreath; 2) Findings the candles, which were packed separately, 3) Discovering that the candles broke somehow while in storage; 4) Driving to at least three stores to find new purple and pink candles (because all the non-Christmas loser people bought them already); 5) Bringing up the wreath and the new candles to the living room coffee table; 6) Realizing that the coffee table is dusty since we never do any living in the living room; 7) Cleaning the table; 8) Placing the wreath; 9) Forgetting to light the first candle for the first Sunday in Advent until the first Tuesday in Advent.

As you can tell, I've honed the process with years of practice.

I'll never get caught up. Maybe I should convert to something else. Hanukkah doesn't start until December 24. That would buy me some time.

I'm gettin' trouble for Christmas.

Blarg.

Hit the wall yesterday.

Found myself in a room full of wrapping paper and boxes and packing materials and crap, Christmas music on the iPhone, and just thought:

I'm so done.

Just hang me.

That's the way it goes, when you go holiday happy. No matter how carefully you plan, things wind up taking longer than you expect, or other people cause delays, or something totally unexpected pops up, and your carefully constructed list of Ho-Ho-Holiday Things to Do winds up bursting at the seams, leaking all over the place. Next thing you know, you're in a room full of unwrapped gifts, feeling like you've been run over by Santa's snowplow.

It's all too much, people say. All this running around and doing and spending and making ourselves crazy. Some who have celebrated in the past openly revolt now. "I'm not doing it this year! NO WAY!"

And that's just fine. Believe me, I sympathize.

What gave me my second wind? It occurred to me that there was no reason why Christmas shouldn't be trouble. Really, why ought it be effortless? Is anything worthwhile effortless? Don't we pour huge amounts of effort into Mardi Gras and Carnivale, two feasts whose basic premise is "We have to eat everything before the fast begins"? Why shouldn't I be put to trouble for the real feast itself?

Of course, the danger, as will be rightly pointed out, is that Christmas can overwhelm Christ, and that we will forget, in that hackneyed phrase, "The Reason for the Season." The Puritans certainly thought that was a problem, and basically wrecked everything fun about Christmas for a hundred years. We are always in peril of letting the things we dedicate to God get in the way of our love of God.

And yet these good gifts are also from God. In Charles Williams's novel War in Heaven, an archdeacon, overwhelmed to find himself holding the actual Holy Grail, says to it,

"Neither is this Thou," he breathed; and answered, "Yet this also is Thou."

So I accept all the trouble I go to for Christmas, although I wish I were better at estimating its extent and my capacity before I launch myself on the journey of Advent. My reach exceeds my grasp. I bite off more fruitcake than I can chew.

First Sunday of Advent.

Happy New Year! The new church year begins with Advent, the season leading to Christmas.

Just light one purple one today, actually.

Advent is a period of preparation leading to the commemoration of the Nativity, traditionally celebrated by drinking too much and eating millions of cookies and shopping like looters. No, actually, the faithful are instructed to prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord. The readings on this first week are all about being ready---don't let the Lord catch you asleep at the switch, dummy!

So it's like Lent really, right? Well, my impression is, yes and no. Back in my semi-pagan days I knew an old Irish fellow who did not drink during Advent as part of his preparation. I thought that was the most insane thing I ever heard. Not drink during the Christmas season? That's impossible! And he's doing it at an office party with free booze! But Advent is not really the Christmas season; Christmas as a season are the days from December 25 to the Epiphany. Then he could drink, I guess. The history is very complicated, and it seems that periods of merrymaking got so out of hand that fasts were imposed off and on. (Lots more at New Advent.)

One priest I knew said that Gaudete Sunday, the third one in Advent (the delightful pink candle is for that, not the birthday of Hello Kitty) is a reminder that Advent is not Lent; "Gaudete Sunday, therefore, makes a breaker like Laetare Sunday, about midway through a season which is otherwise of a penitential character, and signifies the nearness of the Lord's coming." But while Laetare Sunday is not (at least in my experience) celebrated as a break in Lent---I don't recall it ever being especially noted---Gaudete Sunday always is.

It's a bit confusing. Hey, the church has been around for two thousand years, and the complexity and apparent contradictions of the Catechism are as nothing compared to those in the much newer U.S. tax code. Suffice it to say that Advent is not Lent, but it wouldn't kill me or any Christian to use the time of preparation to try to become better people, to do some scriptural reading, and to give up something we love as a sacrifice. But not cookies. Ain't giving up my cookies.