Christmas

Now that Christmas is completely over, I can write about it.
I started this Christmas out with Midnight Mass at the Catholic church up at the U. One of Cory and Alyssa's friends invited us to go, and I was lucky enough to sit next to her during the mass, so I got a lot of explanationabout tiny little things throughout the meeting (ceremony? session?). There was a rock band choir and a lot of singing of traditional Christmas hymns. There were also a couple of poppy songs about the power of love, which I tried to imagine in an LDS service. :) That at least was amusing. My favorite part of the mass is when they had an open prayer session and people in the congregation could shout out whatever they felt the need to pray for. One woman mentioned the soldiers, and I felt so glad, because that was what has been on my mind lately. During the Lord's prayer, we all held hands, and then everyone went around greeting each other and hugging and shaking hands. That was pretty cool, too. It seemed such a stark contrast to the feeling of the Catholic churches in Europe, although I didn't ever attend a mass there. This experience made mass feel so much more human.
I slept in my sister Jill's room on Christmas Eve, and then on Christmas morning, I was awoken by my parents moving around and talking upstairs around 8. I think that was the first time that they woke me up instead of the other way around. We started the present procession around 9 and finished close to 11. As usual.
Jill then made us a Christmas breakfast and we lounged about, watched Johnny English, then made Christmas dinner for which my step-grandma Annetta joined us. The mashed potatoes I made were probably the worst batch I've ever made - not nearly buttery enough. But my mom practically insisted they were fine, I think because she didn't want me to make them more fattening. Next time I am going to fatten them up with sour cream.
So now I am going to just copy from the Christmas email I sent out to explain my feelings about the season:
For my final essay in American Literature this past semester, I wrote an essay about T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and my thesis was that because the poem is so fragmented, the reader has to work hard to gather any meaning out of it, and because they have to work so hard, the poem means so much more. As I was sitting in sacrament meeting the Sunday after I turned the essay in, I was pondering on it, and I realized this was exactly what was going on in my life, spiritually, academically, socially, and emotionally. I had been receiving bits and pieces of light in a way I couldn't understand, so I had had to work to make sense of the experiences I was having. At that moment, I knew I had to have the faith to work hard enough to put those pieces together. That is what happened once I got home for Christmas. Life started falling in place, not in the way I expected, but in a way more surprising and beautiful. And God always works like that. He is brilliant! Although there are still a lot of unanswered questions, I have been provided with a way to move happily through life.
That way is faith in the healing power of the Atonement. I want you all to know that I know my Savior lives and this is what life is about. It's about experience, acceptance, and forgiveness. It's about allowing others to reach you and touch you and lift you up. It's especially about letting Jesus Christ lift you up, because he can lift you higher than anyone else ever could. This is why we have Christmas.
I hope I can remember that all throughout the year and not just at Christmas. As for now, I have a lot to think about and a lot to do...so more thoughts later. We will see how long Christmas holds out...