FELIZ NAVIDAD!

-- Jose Feliciano

I used to love Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I'm still down with the Incarnation, but times have changed. For example.

1. Do people really have the same rocking meals and appetizers now as they did when they were kids? I can't make those cheese cubes, or get the Canada Dry Ginger Ale (the only time we'd drink it when we weren't sick) to that right degree of coldness. Try as the wife and I might, the cheese, pepperoni and cracker spread just isn't the same. And just forget the onion dip. How lame am I? I'm mourning onion dip.
2. Churches. Midnight Mass used to mean climbing the stairs to the upper chapel. A place with a choir loft, high ceilings, dark wood pews and a marble altar with a rail before it. Now I'm not so old as to remember the Traditional Mass from before Paul VI, but I remember candles blazing against the dark mystery of the night. I remember incense, and silence, and a shivery happy type of awe. And I remember walking home feeling solemn and innocent. Nowadays? Church looks like the waiting room of a proctologist's office. Trillion watt lightbulbs blaze away into every corner of the "worship center". Great. I know the first Christmas was in a manger, but do we have to celebrate that by making our churches into barns?
3. Merciful Father, please make the "Children's Mass" craze die off, never to be seen again. If I ever let a child of mine run up to the altar for any reason other than to serve Mass or say Mass, just put a freaking bullet in my head, ok? The Vigil of the Incarnation, what used to be dark, quiet, and reverent is now garish, noisy and profane. Kinda like last minute Christmas shopping at the mall. Thanks, Spirit of Vatican II.
4. At some point, saying "Merry Christmas" became a hate crime. I think this was around the time that "hate crimes" came to be, actually. You know it's bad when you're at a Knights of Columbus meeting, and the other Knights are saying, "Happy Holidays" to each other. Yo, guys, we're all Catholics. Break out the "C" word. I fight back in one of two ways. I'll either ask, "Thanks, but what holiday are we talking about?" (If you want, you can get all Sam Kinison on them, "Say it! SAY IT!") Plan B? I love Plan B! If you can pass for Hispanic, say "Feliz Navidad". It's all part of my theory that while the left hate religion, they have this weak spot for seeing anything said in Spanish as being in solidarity with the "oppressed" and the "other". Confront them with "Merry Christmas" in Spanish and watch the fun. It's like throwing a bucket of water on a 1950's robot. *Twitch* *twitch* pause..*twitch* *beep*. The convulsions the average secular leftist goes through trying to figure out if he should correct one of the "little people" is just so good.
5. There is no five. Merry Christmas, or if you prefer, Feliz Navidad.