Dressed for the Occasion...

Church jankers over one can turn to the main matter of the day, what to wear for Christmas luncheon; which in our house is taken late in the Day owing to the need to attend to the horse both ack and pip emma.

Family communion passed off rather well this year I have to say. M and M sat together singing appropriately lustily. Quite a decent tenor is M; and Maurice is not bad either, though inclined like most untrained male voices to pitch flat. Choir itself was in exceptionally good nick this year and their Agnus Dei quite sent shivers up and down the spine.

Didn't help that the roving microphone packed up in mid Eucharistic prayer, but one merely barked the words not intoned them as preferred, and justice and mercy rained down from the heavens as they should at such sacred moments. The thurifer was suffering from a dose of PBSD [Post Bishop Stress Disorder] with barely an added snuff-pinch full of incense, which was a shame as I rather like a cumulus cloud effect hanging over the altar.

The heating of course played up - though not as usual by refusing to play ball. This year we were treated to great waves of near suffocating warmth flooding from under the gratings. The in-the-know wise ones who had clamoured to get seats above the gratings in the hope of sucking in all the heat, found they were having to shed clothing throughout proceedings to avoid hyperthermia.

Colonel X was not having a good time of it either. Glancing over I spotted him fuming and glowering in best regimental style. Couldn't see what was distressing him, until I noticed that seated immediately behind was a family of chatterers. Colonel X - and I am with him on this - does not much care for chattering in Church at the best of times. For him - and for I - the conversation of a Mass should be with God and not one's neighbours. And as the choir were giving it large I could fully appreciate his not wanting to miss their finest notes because of a murmured haze of chat from the rear.

Oddly enough, although I would far from wish to be generally seen in the same corner as the Colonel - whose views on scoundrels, vagabonds and vagrants of any class, type and nationality are completely predictable - he and I do share certain liturgical dispositions, the above being one.

In addition to that, we are both of a single mind that the Kiss of Peace should have remained a symbolic verbal exchange between priest and congregation, and not become this wretched modern habit - nay compulsion - to grab near and far by the hand giving it a mightily shake and them a volley of goodwill accompanied by a beatific smile. (If you've never been hit amidshps by a fair sized nun wishing to embrace you in her love of the Lord yet in the manner of a decent rugby centre half determined to make a try-saving tackle, then I can only say you have been spared.)

I have proposed on occasions that - as with restaurants who wish to provide sanctuary for the non-smoking among its clientele - any Church should be divided and signed according to 'Shaking' or 'Non-shaking.' Any who wish positively to salivate their love for all human kind would be reserved in the former; whilst the latter would be a refuge for those who prefer not to intimidated in such a distressing and disturbing manner.

The other matter concerns the whole language of the liturgy. Colonel X may not have exactly said that 'if Latin were good enough for Jesus Christ, then it's good enough for him', but that is his essential sentiment and it it also one I most heartily share. I always like to keep half an ear open for him harrumphing the Proper of the Mass in the linqua sacra and wish I could join him, instead of being forced to utter such inanities as "...who died in the hope of rising again", as if somehow to imply that had the deceased not aspired to rising again, then by and large they would not have chosen to die in the first place. ("He went to Norwich in the hope of finding his tailor at home." No hope of tailor being in, no journey to Norwich. You get the idea I'm sure.)

But back to the luncheon and the dressing therefore. It has become our habit over recent years of rush and turmoil trying to balance horse and hearth, not to bother to dress overly formally for even this most solemn occasion. (Enough really that no one at table actively reeks of horse pee!) From that we have progressed - though some might argue degenerated - to the wearing of slogan bearing tee-shirts befitting the person.

For E, who has become a thoroughly full-on teen as well as excellent horsewoman and thoroughly wonderful daughter, we have this year presented her with a simple yet striking number with the legend "Nag, Nag, Nag" emblazoned on it. H's tee-shirt sports the appropriate admonition "My way or the highway!", whilst I am torn between a new creation with an a la mode message - "Bankruptcy? Been there, done that, had the tee-shirt re-possessed!" - and an old favourite which has the entire Simpsons family out in a car, with Homer driving, much like that icon of 1950's clean-cut American photograph but with the slogan "As far as anyone knows we are a nice normal family."

Decisions! Decisions!