So Christmas happened.
It was more or less like every Christmas ever, except that I wore a skirt (and looked fabulous) or a black velvet hoodie (and looked less fabulous) and June made ham (eeeuw) and Esteban went to church with me.
Yes. Really.
You might remember last year’s episode, in which he balked and started pounding on his Book of Atheism (ok, I don’t think they actually have a book) and then I cried and couldn’t manage to say ‘Look, it’s important to me because it’s something I do to remember my Grandmother, and it’s not just a bunch of Christmas carols and pretty lights although yes, that’s there too’. We talked about it again, during our harrowing drive back from my last class of the semester, and I still couldn’t really say that simple sentence, just told him that I didn’t want to drag him to anything and that yes, I’d like him to go if he wanted to go, but if he was going to be there against his will, then I really didn’t want him there. And when he asked for more reasons than that, I started to get upset again and said that I was done talking about it. Which is how we ‘Bix’s deal with unpleasant situations in real life’ we change the subject.
I did not mention it again, only to make sure that everyone knew that I was going to the 7 pm Christmas Eve service and to correct the ‘Ban family when they’d ask me what time mass was (‘Lutherans don’t call it ‘mass’. No, I don’t know why.’) However, around 5 pm while nestled at Ward and June’s house, Esteban announced to his parents that he would be excusing himself from the standard evening of being smushed between his gigantic corn-fed cousins to accompany me to church. This was the first I had heard of it. I said nothing but later when we were in the car, I told him that it made me very happy that he was coming along and thanked him and he said that he was glad. I’m not quite sure what was different this year or how he suddenly changed his position, but I guess I’m not going to question it.
He picked a fine time to relent because last year’s vacancy has apparently been filled. By a whole new kind of pastor. Gone are the days of my childhood, of reserved awe and cautious devotion. There is a new kid on the religious block, which requires a lot more of the congregation. I was a little weirded out when the new guy started the service at the back of the church, carrying a cross on a stick, like some giant holy lollipop, and asking the audience (I chose that word because really, the sense of theatrics here was palpable) to turn and continue to watch him as he passed by.
Then he announced that we would greet our fellow Christians. We went from sitting silently and reflecting to standing up and milling around, shaking hands and talking to the people around us. Touching! We repressed Lutherans do not touch each other. We respect personal space. Esteban has always had the feeling that Lutherans were just trying to be Catholic (northern Wisconsin is a predominantly Catholic region) and this happens regularly in area Catholic services so this was another bullet point to his argument, but my bewilderment demonstrated that yes, Virginia, there is a Touching Clause in my church.
And then came the drama. While the choir was singing (always nice), the pastor disappeared into the vestry. When they finished, he came out WEARING A SHEPHERD’S COSTUME! He stood on the first pew and cleared his throat.
I covered my open mouth with my hand, fearing that I would guffaw uncontrollably. I looked at Esteban. He raised his eyebrow and I shook my head because damn, I didn’t know what the hell was going on either. Apparently, they had introduced a floor show. What was next? If someone came out with a guitar and started changing the words of popular songs, I was going to lose it. Esteban later said that he looked at me to make sure that I was seeing him too and that he hadn’t started to hallucinate Christian imagery.
He adlibbed an extended metaphor about God and sheep, because the sheep don’t understand him enough and if only he could be a sheep and tell the other sheep that he just has their best interest at heart, etc. He peppered it with some silly jokes about fat sheep and then disappeared back into the vestry, as the organ started and then we were singing ‘O Little Town of Bethleham’. Instead of ‘above thy deep and dreamless sleep’ Esteban decided to sing ‘above thy deep and dreamless sheep‘ which just added to the comedy.
I was hoping that the next time, he would come out as an angel or a wise man, but no, shepherd again. This time, he wandered around the pews and I could see that his little white shepherd’s hate thing was actually a white t-shirt. Then he started running in the aisles shouting ‘Merry CHRISTmas!’ and wouldn’t stop until the entire congregation had repeated it several times and then he wandered back into the vestibule.
By then, I decided that had my great grandmother been alive, she would have been furious. She would have made shocked noises from the second he stood on the pew in his shoes and then after service was over, she would have gone over to the front pew, withdrawn a hanky from her enormous purse and then dusted off the imaginary soil left by his shoes. She would have pointedly refused to have said ‘CHRISTmas’ and pretended to not understand, repeating ‘Merry Christmas’ with a short i sound. If my grandfather had been alive, she would have encouraged him to tell the new guy that it just wasn’t how we did things around here, not at this church, and what did he think we were, anyway, showy Baptists?
They had done away with the program this year, relying completely upon the video screens (it looks like Eric, mentioned in that entry, is still in Iraq, though, which sucks) to give the words to the songs and tell you what was going on. The same blonde girl with the unfortunate piggish appearance popped up again, so it was apparently time for her solo, as last year. The choir was down to seven women and five men, so I guess she really didn’t have much competition. The video screen indicated that she would be again singing O Holy Night, and I groaned, because I already knew that she was sort of awful. She has a pretty voice and obviously has some operatic skill, but she’s just all vibrato and can’t enunciate for crap. I hoped that she had learned or maybe wanted to repeat last year’s solo because she had fixed some of the technical problems she had had, but no, if anything it had gotten worse. Despite the fact that different parts of the song should be sung with reverence, hushed awe, joy and then exuberance, she started at full bore and continued through it like a tea kettle hell bent on over boiling,. The way that she failed to enunciate reminded me of Will Forte’s SNL character Tim Calhoun. She did make points for hitting the high note this year but then lost them all when I realized who she reminded me of (Miss Piggy).
The new pastor came back out in his vestments, buckling his watch (at least he had the sense to be a shepherd sans Timex) and then read from the gospels, which I always enjoy. I was pleased to see on the video monitor that he would be reading from Luke, which is my favorite of the two Christmas bits. Except then, it didn’t sound right, and I was confused. Maybe it was Matthew I like most? But wait, it is the part with the shepherds’ oh holy hell, it’s some New Word version of the Bible and not the King James version, and instead of And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. It was something like Hey, shepherds! Chill! It’s all good, because Baby J is in da hizzy. So let’s pa aaah aah tay! Peace out! I was offended, not so much as someone who read her little Child’s illustrated King James bible in religious class and had to memorize awkward bible versus as part of her education, but as someone who also grew up watching Linus request a spotlight and then recite the entire thing by heart. No ‘sore afraid’? No ‘good tidings of great joy’? A travesty. Likewise, I had this vision of the ghost of my sweet little quiet great grandmother standing up, crooking one bony old lady finger at him and chastising ‘Oh no you DI INT!’
Due to all of this mental churning, I managed to hold it together and not burst into tears when the houselights went dim while everyone sang Silent Night. Mostly because my church had just turned into some kind of Feel Good Tent Revival act.
We snuck out the side door and avoided the long receiving line to shake hands with the new pastor. I didn’t really know what I’d say to him anyway. Esteban then told me that he had been grilled when walking into the church by an old usher, who wanted to know who my grandparents had been, and in his shock, he couldn’t think of their last name, so had to duck into the church and race to find me in case a white-haired posse could sense his atheism.
We both spent the rest of the drive to his cousin’s talking about how surreal the service had been and then we went in to face June’s clan, where I sat on the sofa and was summarily ignored and then presented with his cousin Debbie’s incredible Martha Stewart sugar cookies that I am now afraid to open lest they bring about an ass of gigantic proportions.
As for Christmas day, it was on to my family’s brand of weirdness. My mother made me a little crazy and also actually curled her lip when she unwrapped one of her presents from me and said “I’d really have liked the first season of CSI instead.” Well, if this hadn’t been the first time I have heard anything about her enjoyment of said CSI, I would have gotten it for her. Jon didn’t like some of his presents either, feeling that since The Sims 2 was too expensive and I had already given him a mix cd with two of the songs from Green Day’s American Idiot, they weren’t well-chosen gifts. But really, he hid his disappointment better than the 50-plus-year-old supposed etiquette maven, so yeah. Between my immediate family’s gift exchange and going to my Mafia Grandmother’s, Esteban and I went for a drive around the country (and visited Castle Dracula to see if there really were a Christmas miracle of a For Sale sign, but alas, no), took a random left turn and encountered a bra tree by the side of the road. I am mystified. I know that there’s a story there, but I don’t know that I’ll ever find out what it is. And yes, I took pictures, which I’ll load later.
And then we went to Mafia Grandma’s, where we were subjected to Crazy Cane Lady and a weird moment where Mafia Grandma held my hand for like thirty seconds. And this time, I held back an extra present for Esteban and gave it to him there so that he wouldn’t feel so completely ignored again. And then I got a headache, listening to Crazy Cane Lady and my mother’s current beau shouting over the din and competing for the spotlight with their mind-dulling inanities, so we fled early and went home to play World Tournament Poker (new saying in Chez Weetabix: “Play that shit.”) (see also: “Drop that shit.” and “Raise the shit out of that shit.”) (We don’t do drugs. Really.) and then Esteban wanted to eschew our traditional viewing of The Godfather for Return of the King instead, so we did. Or rather, he did and I fell asleep with my head in his lap while he ate cookies.
Which really, is what Christmas is all about. Shared weirdness and then cookies. God bless us every one.
