Please Christmas, Don't Be Late

Please forgive me, Stan Hall and other protectors of the purity of the liturgical year, but I wish it was Christmastime rather than Ordinary time.

I'd even settle for Advent.

Maybe it's because school is pure drudgery right now and, with all apologies to my professors, classes are not exactly firing my engines. I don't think it's the classes themselves, but I am having difficulty engaging myself with my course materials.

So as I labor at my trusty laptop, attempting to finish SPM paperwork, I find my mind wandering to the sounds and sights of the Holiday season. I especially find myself yearning to listen to old holiday albums, though I try not to listen to any Christmas music out of season. My family has a distinct repertoire of holiday albums that we bring out every year. Listening to these Christmas albums is like visiting old friends and it is a joyous reunion when Dad whips out the Kingston Trio and the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Though life may evolve and change through the years, the familiar harmonizations of the Riders in the Sky singing "Silent Night" will remain ever the same.

Perhaps this is why Christmas albums are an integral part of my family's holiday traditions; traditions, after all, are actions and customs perfomed routinely through the course of time. So when we listen to Patrick Stewart read a A Christmas Carol (as is our custom), we are not simply partaking in a Christmas cliche, but rather, we are tapping into a tradition that has molded my family for numerous Christmas Pasts and will continue to mold many of Christmases Yet to Come.

Perhaps I am simply homesick.

Regardless, it is many weeks until Advent, so I will wait patiently, though I may download the White Christmas soundtrack while I do so...