Christmas Day - 2014

Dear Diary,

Christmas Eve service at St. Andrews was as wonderful as I'd hoped.  The children were very sweet and being a "pet friendly" church there were a couple of pups in attendance...very well behaved.

I made this image of a 18th century creche at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut...it was my Christmas card this year.  I always try to do a special photograph during the year that I can have printed as my card.  It was a huge scene with dozens of figures.  It is very similar to the one the MET in NY city puts up every year.  It is behind glass and I wasn't sure I'd be able to get a decent image of the holy family but it came out fine.  It amuses me to see them dressed in 18th century Italian clothes but every time and culture adapts the story and that is as it should be.

At the service last night I sat in a different part of the sanctuary and saw that they had a ceramic plaque almost identical to the one at St. Joseph's that I used in my collage yesterday.  A lovely bit of synchronicity I thought.  I also thought of another synchronicity,  that all over the world, millions of people were doing just what I was doing at that moment... surrounded by only candles, we sang Silent Night and the song and that thought warmed my heart.


Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself...
~Norman Wesley Brooks (U.S. design engineer, 1923–2002)
“Let Every Day Be Christmas,” 1976