Christmas in the Great Southland

There were a number of things different about Christmas in my household this year.

For one thing it’s not too hot … thankfully (at least it wasn’t when I started this post on Dec 27. It’s now Dec 30 and it IS too hot). Maybe it’s because I sent all that sunshine to snowbound MyMac friends in the US. Hope it made it … but you have to expect delays in the postal service at this time of year.

Secondly, I didn’t go to the fruit and veggie market on Christmas Eve (see my 2007 post https://mymac.com/showarticle.php?do=something&id=2359 [for mysterious reasons my 2007 posts are missing from the archive, but this URL takes you to it for equally mysterious reasons]).

I might have forgotten about my resolve to NOT go to the market, but a MyMac reader put a reminder in my iCal calendar and sent me an email reminder. This made me smile. I didn’t think anyone actually read my posts, and here was a person caring enough to remember a year later.

Anyway, all this means that the house is not bursting with stone fruit and mangoes this year – which is a pity – but I don’t have to preserve fruit and make chutney.

You’d think this might have given me some free time for other things – housework, for instance. But it didn’t. There’s no point really. My son became an internet entrepreneur this year, making special (and expensive) cables to link iPods to mini-amps. An amazing number of people want to buy them, despite the recession. I don’t know how Jeremy learned to make these cables, but if the feedback is anything to go by, he’s very good at it.

Why am I telling you this? … Oh yes, to explain why it’s pointless doing housework. You see the whole house has become a workshop, so it’s impossible to make it look tidy.

I didn’t even put up any Christmas decorations, but luckily we still had some up from last year. I took down last year’s cards and hung the new ones. I think I’ll declare that a new family tradition. The tradition used to be to decorate the house and tree on Christmas Eve, but like the fruit and vegetables it was all left to me, and I grew rebellious.

Again we attended the children’s Mass at St Mary’s on Christmas Eve. That would melt the hardest of hearts – except the heart of Richard the Roman. Richard the Roman is the name assigned to a certain fundamentalist Catholic who has raised a ruckus by complaining to the Vatican that the congregation at St Mary’s is not Catholic at all … because of its dubious practices of allowing women to give the homily, accepting gays and lesbians and non-Catholics as an integral and valued part of the community, changing the ‘official’ words of baptismal ceremonies to something relevant to the modern world, and countless other misdemeanours.

The Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane has been told by the Vatican to bring this renegade St Mary’s into line. He’s not having much success in this. I rather hope we’ll be excommunicated, and maybe get one of those Papal Bulls declaring our excommunication which can then be passed down to our descendants as a family heirloom. (Richard the Roman, I should explain, doesn’t even live in the area, but drives some considerable distance to spy on us and take photos on his mobile phone … not an iPhone of course).

We had a lovely Christmas Day with our friend Natalie and her family, on the verandah of her rambling old Queensland house. I’d post a photo, but some might complain it wouldn’t be good for their public image.

Best wishes to all for the coming year. Focus on the good stuff … the world needs a hearty dollop of positive energy.