I always have to remember that Christmas isn’t just a day but a whole season. You never know where you will find your Christ Child in His manger or when the Magi will show up. If one is truly devout, Christmas can end on Candlemas, February 2nd, the Feast of The Presentation of the Christ Child in The Temple. And, if one is eager to get the ball rolling again, The Annuciation is March 25th. On that day, the Angel Gabriel announces to The Blessed Virgin Mary that she will bear The Messiah.

Santa Claus and the whole manic secular holiday is fairly short. No sooner does the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade end at Herald Square, than we’re looking at After-Christmas sales, or so it seems. Fun, for sure, just like a roller coaster. You never know when the real joyful day will come.

This Christmas, the magic day was today, when my son told me, “Dad I have responsibilities.” In his case, it’s a dog to care for. And a job to be at. But he acknowledged he has adult responsibilities. He knows he’s an adult. He also played the piano over the phone for me. 32 years old. I am so proud.

That’s Christmas. No tree needed. Nor even a Midnight Mass,

My son is a man. And I helped in his becoming that person. I did my job.

I awoke about an hour ago, around 0230. J is at work, moving stock from the delivery truck and the stock room to the shelves. The holiday overnights should end soon, maybe another two weeks.

I am watching a freight train go through Ashland. Spotting a train is like catching a fish. I sit and wait and see what happens.

I made the mistake of reading a Reddit thread from someone who possessed more opinions than facts. There are a lot of people like this person, myself included. Like Montaigne, I will now write about the one person I do know. Me. Gets a little tedious, reading opinions from gas bags who castigate people they don’t like as “bloviators”. Jesus spoke about people who call out others for having specks in their eyes, while they possess logs in theirs. Yeah, some things never change.

I guess the internet serves as a huge safety valve. It allows people to fulminate about some public figure or another, without resorting to messy assassinations. Maybe Oswald would have remained a harmless loser, had he possessed a Facebook© page rather than a Mannlicher Carcano rifle with a telescopic sight.

Most of us, though, go through life with a large assemblage of hunches or intuitive feelings that the whole story on any subject, issue , or person is never fully revealed or disclosed. It’s similar to that subliminal sense of danger that keeps a good soldier alive. We know things are incompletely revealed. We know we are being told stories. We sense when we are getting “spin” around a person or situation or legislative proposal. That’s why politics reads like a melodrama most of the time.

Powerful people want to hold on to the power that they have, whether that power is money, political influence or marketable charisma. Getting the news that the days of power are over is most unwelcome. Like the alcoholic, who is the last person to comprehend his alcoholism, the “has- been” is always the last person to know the glory days are gone. It’s what makes those commercials Joe Namath does for Medicare Advantage plans so agonizingly cringe-worthy.

(Joe, the game is over! Half the people watching you don’t know or remember who you were.)

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I have this thing that rents space in my cranium. It may or may not support me in what I want to do, choose to do, need to do.

I am NOT the Master of my thoughts. I am more like a spectator to the cerebral sumo wrestling between the part of my brain interested in my welfare and its mirror image committed to my unhappiness and discontent.

If you think this is overblown, consider that taking care of me often sounds like selfishness on my part. Sleep, exercise, regular meals, prayer, positive self-talk all sound like self-indulgent luxuries rather than the fundamentals of positive self-care.

So here we are, ready to finish another orbit around our home star and I’m back in the Remedial Human Being Section.

Oh well. Be kind to me. Because I probably won’t be.

I have our dinner cooking for J and me. That’s all. It’s another Christmas of no decorating, except for my Russian Orthodox tryptich of The Nativity.I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago. See Confession.

Christmas with no little children around is not the same. With the pandemic, the Churches are empty. I’m waiting for Russian Orthodox Christmas on 7 January. People should be there. The way the Russians figure it, as long as the Germans (Nazis) aren’t around, no reason not to celebrate. It’s a point well taken.

I’m fixing a roast chicken. Easier for two people to consume than a turkey.

Later..

Chicken was good.

Today sucked. Not going to sugar-coat it. J spent the day in bed. Just because there was no reason to get out.

Don’t want to hear any Magic of Christmas crap.

Over it.

I finished my day as I have for several months now, by praying The Rosary. Noncatholics and nonbelievers will wonder why I do this.

You may as well ask why I brush my teeth every day, or eat fruits and vegetables, or exercise. The answer is the same, to stay healthy. It keeps the vortex of negativity and nonsense in check, mostly.

I prayed it tonight with a friend in another city. We watched the Rosary prayed from Lourdes, site of the Marian Apparition, occurring in 1858, at the now famous grotto.

Christian, (Catholic) spiritual growth isn’t entirely about feeling. There is lots of thought involved, contemplating the Mysteries of Gof’s Love.

Growing up Protestant, I had John 3:16 committed to memory by about age 8.

For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life

Faith, choosing Christ, is not like winning the lottery, or a guarantee of success in this life. You could very well end up dead, as the faithful of Nigeria, Iraq, and even France, among numerous countries, have learned in our time.

My problems have not been solved. But explaining to a nonbeliever that relationship with God, (in all three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity), is not like having an invisible friend (or friends). This is where going beyond feelings enters in. Faith is about contemplation and actions.

I am tired. Bedtime.

There are certain advantages to waking up early, in a sleep-deprived state.

Actually, there aren’t , but I’m trying to be positive about it

I just listened to Maria Callas sing La Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen

Now Anna Netrebko is singing an aria by Donizetti. One of my secret pleasures is bel canto opera. This is all from YouTube. Moving on to Gounod and Faust, Netrebko again is holding forth.

Serenity is creeping back into my soul.

There is no plague.

There are no politicians, no pederast priests, no children kill themselves.

There is hope.

News I can watch before I start thinking crazy thoughts. You know, the kind of thoughts that will bring federal law enforcement to one’s door, if acted upon.

So I turned the news off. I’m back to watching The Russians at Church. There is beauty and reverence, plus magnificent choral music.

“But you told us already,” I hear you saying. And you are correct. But it bears repeating.

Some, maybe most of you, have the capacity to filter this fertilizer, but I don’t. So listening to the lovely meter of a Russian Orthodox homily, in a language I hardly understand, comforts me. The Russians. who lived in the fire of Communism for eighty years, find the frying pan of Putin, relatively comfortable.

So I’m going to chill.

Maybe some cartoons will be on the program tonight. Some reading, perhaps. Some beauty, balance, symmetry will be on the agenda. These are the things the arts, in the classical sense of the term, provide. I will consider Raphael and Michelangelo tonight, pass on Picasso and Chagall.

What I will be doing is repudiating the false promise of progress. Progress is the bait on the hook that we hit on. Who baits the hook is another question I will not explore tonight.

Last night , I woke up around  Three AM., stayed awake for three hours, then went back to sleep. That is not unusual. But when I awoke again around Ten AM, I had no idea what day of the week it was. And I really didn’t care.

Chalk it up to Covid-19.

Auden wrote in September 1, 1939 of a low mean decade coming to an end. Were it only a decade.

How much can the heart take? The swirling, all-surrounding drama doesn’t end. Ever.

We await the promise of The Manger yet again, as we have these many years.

He always comes.

And we are never prepared.

I was born ten years later,

In an alien land.

How could I possess even a tribal memory?

A hint that my yet to be formed heart could bleed at Brest, Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, Kharkov, Orel?

St Petersburg froze and bled and starved while bearing its pseudonym.

As did Tsaritsyn.

God welcomes all His martyrs.