Merry Christmas, internet! I hope you either are having a wonderful day filled with joy and mistletoe and presents and holiday cheer, or you are having a nice relaxing day off from work!

Yesterday, being Christmas Eve, we spent doing the Christmassy things that we should have done a week since, like buy the tree and put up the lights and get the food and things. It really isn't possible to wait any longer and still actually have the house decorated for the feast. We may be procrastinators, but we always make it.

First we had to go to confession, to do our Christmas duty. We got there and there were two lines going, I picked one and Mom the other, but I got out about ten minutes before she did--I told her that she picked the serial killer line and I picked the nun and priest line.

I miss the old confessional, though, even though they did the remodeling before I had my confirmation, which was at 12, I think. The old confessional was a tiny dark closet with a dim light that would go out as soon as you knelt on the kneeler, like a refrigerator. And you would kneel there in the pitch black, waiting for the priest to open the screen that you would whisper your sins through.

Now it's a little office with a table and light-coloured walls and a curtain running across the length of the table that you can have open or closed as you choose, and on the parishioner's side there is a chair and a kneeler.

The whole thing is much less like going to confession and much more like having a performance review at work. I was going to write "Except for the giant crucifix on the wall behind the boss," except for the fact that there isn't one. Isn't a confessional supposed to be at least a little churchy?

Next we went to Vons to get the stuffing and bread pudding fixins, and found everything but Mom's rutabagel. So we went to Albertson's, where it was like trying to park at the toy store, there were so many circling cars and so few spots, and they had rutabagels, but only like four small oddly coloured ones.

Why had no-one before mentioned the apparent world-wide rutabagel shortage? I've heard of the caviar shortage and the swordfish shortage, where is the outrage among this country's rutabagel lovers about the tragic lack of rutabagels across this great land of ours?

Possibly because my Mom is the only one.

After the Great Rutabagel Search of 2001 (and by the way, I know it's rutabaga, it's just a babyish habit of mine to mispronounce the name), we went to the tree lot to get our tree.

And a sad selection there was, too. My Christ, you wait until it's less than 12 hours before Christmas Day, and the selection is sad and pitiable, nothing but Charlie Brown trees as far as the eye can see. Or at least that would be so if the eye could actually see only about ten feet, because most of that lot was empty as a grave.

There were a few dry trees, a few trees with giant holes in them, and a few dry trees with giant holes in them. We found the most fluffy and full one possible, though I wanted a different one, because I just fell for it. It just had holes for days, but I anthropomorphised it to within an inch of its life, as is my wont, so I wanted it anyway.

I was talked round, and I really like the tree that we got, but the other one had more personality.

We went home and Mom went to Williams Sonoma to get a browner, while I put up the lights and tree and creche and decorated the house with all of our various angels and candles and Santas and wreaths and things.

It was all terribly festive when I was done. Late, but great.

There was a call from Melanie as well when we got home, inviting us to her church for the completely unrehearsed Nativity play with her children playing Mary and Joseph (the fact that the Holy Family were brother and sister is something that was apparently glossed over in the Bible), but since we were planning on going to midnight mass, neither Mom nor I had the energy to go out twice.

Melanie also said that the kids had read my entry, that Rebeccah was thrilled to have made the page, and Katherine was miffed at being called a monkey and claimed not to have gnashed her teeth one bit.

I called back and told her to tell her monkey-assed daughter not to be so damned literal. And I'll bet she gnashed her teeth when she was claiming not to have gnashed her teeth. Her monkey teeth, that is.

We ended up not going to midnight mass after all, so we could have seen the incestuous monkey version of the Nativity, but I didn't decide that I was too tired to go until after the play was over and I was watching It's a Wonderful Life on TV.

So there was wrapping and there were presents and there was realizing that I couldn't go to Kinko's to upload when I was all caught up and everything, because they actually closed and let their employees go home on Christmas Eve. Have they no priorities? Don't they care that I can't check my email?

And then I went to bed, and fell asleep as fast as I could, because I have never seen anyone put my stocking under the little tree on my table, and I'm not starting now. If it ain't Santa, I am too old to have my dreams dashed, baby.

Today's horoscope:
Good food and pleasurable people set the scene for an excellent time. Plan or attend a dinner party.

One year ago today:
I'm downstairs, watching the traditional Christmas "Price is Right", waiting for Mom to get up so that we can open the presents!

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Last Updated Tues 25 December 18:27:09 2001