Two masses on Christmas Eve—the first with St Matthew’s “Joseph” gospel and the blessing of the creche; the second a solemn mass with St Luke’s gospel. And Christmas morning sung mass with St John’s gospel. And lots and lots of carols. Then a quiet, lovely day with my family. God bless us, every one.

A messy Christmas Eve—the garbage disposal plugged up with dungeness crab shells, and took
four hours to dismantle, unclog and then reassamble
and clean the mess.  All so that 6 of us, my wife, my son and his wife, and two of their adultescent sons can have crab louis for christmas. 
Beyond that, he has a job interview right here in Florence on St. Stephen’s day!! 
So, to the 10 am Eucharist, and then home to
pick more crab!! 
In the midst, as Rowan Williams wrote, joy is found.

We had four Christmas Eve services last night here in Ogden, UT. This morning, I preach at one of our campuses just north of Salt Lake City, and right after service, we (we’ve got two girls, 2 and 3) get into the van and drive 8-9 hours to Denver to enjoy a week with family there. It will be different spending Christmas in a van, but I’m looking forward to the joy at the end of it.

All Catholic all the time!  Midnight Eucharistic Adoration, Sacrament of Reconciliation, Novena for the Ordinariate, and Midnight Solemn Mass last night at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Annandale, VA.  Once we recover, my wife and I are off to Edenton, NC later today to visit the in-laws for a few days.

Relocated by the company this to the Blue Ridge Mountains, so not with my family for the first time in my life.  I drove 130 miles round-trip yesterday to attend Christmas Eve services at an Anglican church up in the mountains of North Carolina – only to find that they had moved the time of the service!

Oh well. I turned on Carols from Kings College, and had my very own beautiful Christmas Eve service in my car while driving on the gorgeous Blue Ridge Parkway.

Merry Christmas to you all, and thank you for your ministry Kendall.

Lovely, quiet Christmas here at home. Son and I went to the earlier Christmas Eve service which was very long, beautiful and well-attended! What I thought was rather neat was the fact that everyone was given a church calendar of worship and activities through Easter 2012! A subtle (or not) invitation to visitors to join us beyond Christmas. There are some really excellent things planned for Lent, including a focus class on C.S. Lewis’ writings.

Anyhoo, we had a very late, after-service Christmas Eve supper of salmon in pastry and lovely sides that took me a while to prepare but was very much worth the wait! We decided we wanted homemade pasta for today’s dinner and I am fixing to begin the gnocchi! The meatballs are already done.

I have read that one can substitute parsnips for potatoes to mash and I’m about to find out if this healthier root veg. will save us some calories without sacrificing taste or texture if I substitute half of the potatoes with parsnips! Or I may chicken out and try it on a less-momentous day, lol.

A happy Christmas to all!

We are thrilled to have all three Harmon children home in Summerville, South Carolina, 1/2 hour northwest of Charleston, S.C., by car. Went to the family service last evening with a creative Christmas pageant at Christ Saint Paul’s Yonges Island where we all got to sit together for the presentation (a real rarity).  Afterward we enjoyed dinner with our friends the Borretts—wonderful food and fellowship.

A gathering of the clan and a country Christmas up in the hills.  It has been an excellent day after great services now drawing to a close, with yet more feasting ahead apparently.    Happy Christmas to all and God bless you mightily.

Hubby and I spent Christmas Eve at church singing at two services. Christmas Eve dinner was a mediterranean fish stew- yum!  Up early this morning to open gifts then off to church as we sang at the Christmas Day service. We (the two of us) were half the choir (of 4)- normally around 25-30 singers.  Spent the afternoon cooking preparing for a delicious dinner shared with friends.  Taking a road trip tomorrow then to have sing at a funeral on Tuesday.

We spent the afternoon of the 24th with my daughter, son-in-law, and their 3 year old daughter in north Asheville, then to St. Andrew’s, Bessemer City for the 7 pm eucharist. I’ve been Sunday supply there since March and will end in January. Back by 10:30 and to bed. Drink before dinner at Deerfield with friends, dinner, and an evening with other friends. I’m on the Program Committee and have a meeting tomorrow at 10. We’ll do a big service at Craggy prison on the 8th.

Midwestnorwegian we have an AMIA and 3 APA parishes in the Asheville area as well as 12 Episcopal congregations that range from moderate to progressive.  Let me know when you next come to town. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Got up at 6am on Christmas Eve and went to adoration. Then spent Christmas eve feverishly cleaning up, but it looked good by 10pm when our oldest came home from college with her fiancee.  Then we all went to midnight mass - a very beautiful, bilingual service.

Then we all came home and collapsed. We were going to open presents in the morning but the kids couldn’t wait so they opened it during the night!  Had Christmas lunch and otherwise had a quiet day, except for packing as we are going on vacation tomorrow with our mother and cousin

I spent Christmas Eve and morning as the night on-call doctor at the hospital I work at as an intern near Tacoma, Washington. The nurses in the ICU had a pot-luck so I got some food there and none of the patient’s I was covering had anything too crazy go wrong so it was overall a good night. I also went to the hospital’s candlelight Christmas service in the chapel until I got paged out of it. The service was surprisingly Scripture-saturated and Christ-focused so it was a blessing to hear the story once again and worship while working in the hospital. Merry Christmas to the T19 community!

Spouse and I split the kids on Christmas Eve day; they worked on church preparations whilst my oldest daughter and I shopped till we dropped in the grocery store, getting the last minute things for Christmas dinner. 

1st service @ 1800 with record attendance; 11 pm service was also good, well-attended, and pretty, but Dad+ handled that one himself as all the troops were in bed by then. In between we opened a lot of gifts that had been sent to us.  After 11 pm service, we decorated our living room and then crawled in bed about 02, up @ 0830 for Christmas Day service.  Dad and two kids did that, then we met them and some church members at local International House of Pancakes for Christmas breakfast pig-out.  Since then, we have pretty much slept for two days, with kids intermittently playing with toys.  The old aviator mentality—“Eat till you’re tired, sleep till you’re hungry”.  Works for me, especially right now, on the downslope from some serious yet fun “busyness”.  Hugs and blessings to all; we are very thankful for everything we have, including our blog friends!!  Have a great week, too, and Happy New Year!!