Hope all of you had a bright and shiny December 25th! We celebrated by getting about 20 inches of snow. And rain. And sleet.
48 hours of this crap.
On the plus side, everything is beautiful and white and Christmassy! On the minus side, it is impossible to walk on the roads without slipping and falling on your arse.

Ah well. We had a..... UNIQUE Christmas at the Haverkamp household. It's a bit of a long story, so buckle your seatbelts. Or navigate away to Facebook to read the 600+ "Mery chrismas"es that your friends have posted. Your choice.
At least my story is properly punctuated.

We went to the 10:30 service at the little church close by that we hadn't been to since summer.
I'm still deciding whether that experience was hilarious or horrifying.

The choral anthem was "Where Is The Child," something about how "I used to love Jesus and have Him in my heart, but now I'm just sad all the freaking time," but I wasn't really paying attention to the lyrics because SO MANY OLD PEOPLE, the vibrato nearly broke the windows. I expected one of the sopranos to keel over on a high note.

Next came the technical difficulties with the projector during the dimly-lit sermon. Dear reader, when utilizing computer technology to project a slideshow, it is generally more acceptable to get the computer running, THEN turn on the projector, instead of showing us all your background of Hawaii or whatever, and demonstrating your sheer technical incompetence. Not only that, but really, did you think we wouldn't notice your re-use of the pictures, even after you had cropped and flipped and done God-knows-what-else to them? Frankly, one shot of Inexplicably Ripped Baby Jesus and Slightly Stoned Madonna is enough for me.
The icing on that particular cake was the pagan fertility symbol that capped off the slideshow. TO ALL WHO APPARENTLY HAVE NEVER SEEN THE MOON: When it is in its "fingernail" stage of the wane, the crescent tilts about thirty degrees in either direction. NOT 180, because then it becomes the horned symbol of Cernunnos, who really has no place in a UCC, and is probably more comfortable off in the woods of Ireland somewhere, anyway.

My family and I embarrassed ourselves by cheerfully singing the "old-fashioned" words to the carols, sans hymnals. Little could we know that some politically-correct lunatics had gone into the New Century Hymnal with a red pen and a serious chip, and changed half the lyrics from "thee" to "you," and "Him" to "The Child," which really makes no sense, as, whatever you believe about God, Jesus was pretty definitely male. Maybe Dan Brown will write a novel explaining otherwise, but until then, I'd like to believe that Christ had a Y chromosome.
The best part about this? When we realized everyone else was singing the lame PC versions, what did my family do? Sing louder. And in Latin.

While we were reeling from this multitude of indignities, NBUCC decided to deal a death-blow in the form of a hula.

Yes, you read that right. A hula.

Like from Hawaii.

With the hip-wiggling, and the arm-waving, and the- country music?
What?

I'm sorry, what?

Yes, dear reader, not only had select members of the congregation prepared a HULA for our enjoyment(ish), they performed it to some obscure alto crooner from below the Mason-Dixon line, who mumbled something about "The Shepherd."

May God have mercy on their souls.

My aunt, visiting from California, and my older siblings, who have been to this church all of 3 times, lightened my mood considerably with their horrified and baffled expressions on the car ride home, and the sibs and I eased the pain with an hour of Patrick Stewart as Ebenezer Scrooge snarling at various innocent English people. Believe me, it helps.

Anyway, hope you all had a jolly old time, even if you don't celebrate Christmas, and hey - it's almost the new year! Jinkies.

Hannah out.