Sketching in the snow

Today on my way to Candlemas Mass I stopped and sketched Tempo. That is a restaurant occupying a beautiful old mansion on Delaware Avenue.

Is that correct, to say Candlemas Mass? Is it not just Candle Mass? Well, we say Christmas Mass.

Anyway.

It was fun, drawing Tempo. It took me out of my day. This is funny but I think the right way to draw a building is, you sketch in the shape, then you fill it out. I do not normally operate that way. I started in this case at the upper left hand corner of the drawing, and then I worked my way down. Always in ink, too, so you do not erase. If I worked in pencil I would always be erasing.

I was thinking, that all through my life, when I have done crossword puzzles -- any puzzles -- I have always worked in ink as well. My mother always used pencil. She used to try to reason with me because sometimes I would end up having to cross things out, and it would turn into a mess. But doing a crossword in pencil is no fun! The fun is writing in ink.

I am an ink-stained wretch!

I will have to finish the Tempo sketch and post it. I could take it only so far. No. 1 I had to go to Mass. Secondly, it was snowing and the window I was looking through, the side window, was getting snowy to the point that I could not see. I rolled it down to take the picture.

After Mass my car was covered in snow and I had to brush it off.

An observation on this year's Christmastide: It began and ended with snow!

On Christmas Eve we got our usual Christmas Eve snowstorm. I came out of Midnight Mass at, yikes, about 2:30 a.m. And my car was buried as was everyone else's. Heavy, wet snow. Buffalo. Got to love it!

Now on Candlemas evening I came out of the candlelit Mass and my car was again covered in snow. Not as bad as after Midnight Mass on Christmas, but still.

We have not gotten much snow in the interim!

Well, it is all worth it. Mass tonight, it was about two hours long, but when I came down from the choir loft for Communion, I was just overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. The church was dark and lighted only by candles. There were candles arrayed all over the high altar and the people in the pews were holding candles. It had looked beautiful from above but it was even more beautiful below.

Mozart and Beethoven and Palestrina must have gone to Mass in such an atmosphere!

I took this pic shortly before Mass but it does not begin to describe it.

Most people go through their whole lives and never experience anything like this!

And on top of that we had a white Christmas.

The start, and the finish!

The Candlemas compromise

Not to shock anyone, but I do believe I have officially the last Christmas tree up in our neighborhood. 

This year, I have to say, there were more contenders for the title. Especially along the "better" streets, like Nottingham and Middlesex, I saw trees up well into mid-January.

Some of those houses still have their lights up in the trees outside, which I love. And they have their wreaths up as well. But the trees are down. You know what, they were probably real, and real trees have to go out to the curb at some point. I sort of forget that. Good for those folks on Nottingham and Middlesex, keeping the season as it should be kept.

However. Tomorrow, Feb. 2, is the ancient feast of Candlemas which marks the end of the Christmas season.

After Mass the tree will have to come down.

OK, I will give myself till the next day. It is just that this year the tree is so pretty. I really worked on it. Just the other day I was rearranging some ornaments.

Let us look on the bright and twinkly side. I am very happy that last year I initiated my own new personal custom of leaving the lights up year-round. After they come off the tree they will go up around the windows. Like last year!

That is a nice compromise, is it not? 

I sort of miss them around the windows, anyway. I was tempted to leave the lights up around the windows and get new lights for the tree. But then I thought: no. It has to be an exchange. Otherwise when you take the tree down you are losing something.

I refuse to be a loser.

Let there be lights!

The buzz about Candlemas

Today at church we finally got Candlemas right.

It is not easy, getting Candlemas right! Not only is it not easy, it is a journey. A long journey. Looking back on the time the incense burner snapped I find it hard to believe that six years have passed.

There were other unsuccessful Candlemases too. But they are none of your beeswax.

Beeswax, get it?

I could not help that!

Not for nothing did I write that column The Buzz for so many years in The Buffalo News.

This morning we all went up to the communion rail at the start of mass and were given candles. Beeswax candles with a wonderful aroma.

It was breathtaking to see more and more candles lighted. After a while you extinguished them, and then you lighted them again, and then you extinguished them, and then you lighted them. They were lit for the Consecration. How beautiful that was, a couple of hundred people kneeling there with lighted candles. I could not get over it.


Not only that but as they blessed the candles at the start of Mass the Latin prayers translated to this, which I am cutting and pasting:

O holy Lord, almighty and eternal God, who didst create all things out of nothing, and by Thy command didst cause this liquid to come by the labor of bees to the perfection of wax ...

 My friend Meghan and I were following along in her missal and it seems the translation there was even better. However I will have to go and find it. The reason I was reading her missal was that mine was over in the social hall somewhere. I left it there while setting up the coffee hour and when I went flying over to church trying to get there in time, I could not find it and had to leave it behind.

The hurry was worth it. What a great experience. The priest even mentioned in his sermon that today is 02-02-20. It is a palindrome which means it reads the same backwards as forwards. I had read about that yesterday but had he not brought it up, it would have slipped my mind. You must enjoy something like that on the actual day or it is not as much fun.

02-02-20.

It rhymes with "Et cum spiritu 2-0."

A most magical day!


 

 

Me and my Christmas cards

On the Fifth Day of Christmas I found myself making Christmas cards.

I know, I am jumping the gun just a little. In the traditional Catholic crowd I run with, it is not only acceptable, but it is encouraged, to wait until after Dec. 25 to send your cards. It is especially desirable to wait a little later because Christmastide extends till Candlemas, Feb. 2.

And after that you will find all of us at the gym doing overtime. That is because of the Tom & Jerrys which are another story for another day.

I could not believe how I took to these Christmas cards once I had found my groove. I love working with letters. I just love it.

For one card I wrote with a wide-nib dip pen and white ink. It was kind of chalky but when it was dry I drew in the letters. I striped one stroke and I added dots to another one... Too much fun, is all I can say.

For a while I was writing on the cards with a white gel pen: "Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus, ex Maria Virgine, gaudete." It was a mouthful but it filled the card and I had a lot of fun with it. I filled letters in with my Dr. Ph. Martin's ink that I splurged for a while ago at Michael's. If not now, when?

Then I decided to cut the words back and I did, "Gaudete, Christus est natus." That green card below, by the way, it is not finished. I add a lot of gold and silver and stuff because I believe that belongs on Christmas cards in vast quantities.

So it goes!!

It goes like it goes as the David Shire song goes.

I just hate to see the tradition of Christmas cards disappearing. I like traditional Christmas cards, too, as opposed to the ones with photos. I mean, the photo cards are better than nothing, but I like cards with artwork. Even a tacky Santa I will take, with rejoicing. I love the entire genre.

And I am proud to be contributing to it! I even wrote on Facebook that if people sent me their addresses I would send me one. I got about a half dozen responses. See, that is how popular I am.

Gaudete!

The Christmas tree quandary

I have a terrible confession: My Christmas tree -- pictured at left when it was still bright white -- is still up.

I keep promising myself I will take it down but then I do not.
Part of the problem is, it is still snowy outside. When it goes up into the 40s or something, then you can think spring, and that is the time to take down the tree. When you get into Lent, Lent means spring, and that is the time to take down the tree.

Not now!

Last week I went past some of the better houses, on Nottingham and streets like that, and some of them still had trees lit up outside. So I am not alone.

Still I feel a little funny plugging in the tree. I know it is time to take it down. We have passed Septuagesima Sunday and Sexagesima -- hee hee -- Sunday. Candlemas is past.

What is wrong with me?

It is not even a real tree. It does not have to go out on the curb or die a terrible death like the tree in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Fir Tree."

It simply goes into its box and is put away, in preparation for coming out in again in what, a few months?

Why can't I take down my tree?

Hahaha... I am laughing over all my old Christmas tree stories.

There was one year I went without. Unbelievable but true.

There was another year when it was the Fourth Sunday of Advent and I did not have a tree and rushed out to get one and wound up in Christmas tree stand emergency mode.

There was the year I put the tree up on Christmas Eve. I could not get to it before then!

Oh, look! There was one year I did not take the tree down till Ash Wednesday. And Ash Wednesday that year was March 9!!

That is what I will do this year. I will take the tree down on Ash Wednesday.

I must be strong!

Standing tall

Today being Septuagesima Sunday I piously decided to take down my Christmas tree. Septuagesima Sunday is sort of the start of Lent. Lent does not technically begin until Ash Wednesday but the countdown begins today.

I had been talking a good game about keeping my tree up till Candlemas on Feb. 2. But how do you argue when Lent begins to cast its shadow? The Nativity Scene was gone from St. Anthony's this morning. The priest wore purple vestments. And there was my tree, still in the window?

T'aint right, I lectured myself. Take it down. And while you are at it, take all those Christmas magazine issues you have been cooking out of and put them away until next year.

But then, being that I have trouble making decisions, I decided to get on the Internet and double check. I Googled "Catholic When To Take Down Christmas Tree."

There were the usual folks saying Epiphany. Yeah, yeah. That ship has sailed. One Catholic site, I am not going to call it in, but it said, "Observe the holiday of Epiphany by taking down your Christmas tree."

What kind of a sad sack holiday observation is that? Someone has something screwed up. When Epiphany comes that is when you unpack your little statues of the Three Kings and place them around your manger scene. Then you make King Cake and feast on it with your friends. Fie on that Web site. Fie!

Then I found this essay on the Catholic Answers web site. 

It was titled "Catholics! Keep Your Tree Up." And it concluded that it is right and just to keep the tree up until, yes, Candlemas. Even if Septuagesima Sunday gets there first! He specifies that.

Quoth the writer:

 "If you want to be really traditional, you can celebrate what the faithful called “Christmastide” before the liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council. In the old rite, or what we today call the Extraordinary Form, Christmastide lasted for 40 days to correspond with the 40 days of Lent, and the 40 days from Easter to Ascension Thursday.  

A 40-day party? Gloria in Excelsis! (And people say Trad Cats are a dour bunch.)

End result, as we say here in Buffalo: instead of taking the tree down I plugged it in. Jeoffry was dancing at my heels. He loves the Christmas tree. We are always finding him just sitting there gazing at it. He sat down right then and there and feasted his eyes. He is a Trad Cat!

We have another week!

Perhaps I will listen to Christmas music. Perhaps I will bake more cookies.

On the other hand ... definitely I will!