For those of you into that sort of thing...

Merry Christmas!

Once the stress of buying presents is over, I adore Christmas. Our traditional Christmas Eve meal of tomato soup and smoked salmon filled almost to the point of sickness last night, but it was well worth it.

Attending the midnight service at St Paul's here in Winston-Salem is one of my favorite parts of Christmas. In spite of the soulless recitations of the majority of Episcopalian congregations (a subject that deserves a post of its own), I always feel a real and deep faith during services. My favorite reverend gave a typically gorgeous sermon about the death of his mother and father-in-law in the Christmas season last year, and the bible verse at the end brought tears to my eyes. The finale of "Angels We Have Heard On High" blew me away like it does every year. It's a service that reminds me that my faith is a very real and important thing, and I promise myself that I'll go to church more often in the coming year. I hope I mean it this year.

The presents were opened up this morning, and it was another gift-certificate-filled Christmas morning. I don't like gift certificates; it's not only giving a non-personal gift, but it's leaving the price tag on. But in a way, it's nice. My family doesn't expect much in the way of presents, so these little gift placeholders takes a lot of the pressure off of gifts and puts it where it belongs: faith, family and food.

So now it's the traditional Christmas down-time between opening presents and Christmas dinner at my uncle's house where I'll eat myself sick again. It's a beautiful day, it's a wonderful life, it's a time of celebration and faith. And eating. Lots and lots of eating.

Merry Christmas!