Travalon and I have been listening to a seasonal station called "Cool Jazz Christmas." There's one called "Christmas Traditions" that's pretty good and plays 40's classics, but when I tried to find it, we got some countrified Christmas station. Then we found the cool jazz one, and I would straight up listen to this station any time of the year. It makes the trite songs like "Let It Snow" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" actually sound good, and the really old carols like "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" and "We Three Kings" are sublime. Too bad that it will vanish the day after tomorrow.
Today we didn't do much of anything because it's so cold out, so we just walked around the house again. I have partly made the cassata and also made some cranberry sauce. We watched a bunch of Peppa Pig cartoons. Also, all the NFL teams that had to lose for the Packers to have a shot at the playoffs actually did, so now all the Packers have to do is win in Miami, ha ha. Plus win their two games after that. This seems like a very long shot to me, but the true believers on social media think it will happen. That would be a true Christmas miracle!
We went to Mass this evening, and the music was heavenly. A quartet sang that included Kathbert and my OTHER choir director. This time of year is when I realize how much I miss singing, and I sang the carols with great gusto - maybe too much gusto, because several people around me afterwards said what a beautiful voice I had. You aren't really supposed to be singing solos in the congregation. I did enjoy singing harmony on some verses of the carols. One of the communion pieces was the "Ave Maria" that our former choir sang at our wedding, and I thought it was by Victoria, but the program tonight said it was by Handl, not the guy who wrote The Messiah but the guy sometimes called Gallus. I guess either way, I'm a huge fan of both Victoria and Handl/Gallus, but it seems odd that a piece by one of them could get misattributed to the other one. They lived around the same time, but come on, one was in Spain and the other was in Slovenia.
After Mass we went with Richard Bonomo to Amber Indian Restaurant, which has been our tradition for some years now. They always give us a free small dessert on Christmas Eve; other years it has been a small bowl of mango ice cream or pistachio ice cream, but this year it was a piece of yogurt cake. I had shrimp tikki masala because some cultures traditionally avoid meat on Christmas Eve, although I wasn't aware that was a thing until reading it on social media today. I guess I had heard of the Italian Seven Feasts fish thing. Then Travalon and I went to the house with the over-the-top light display set to music, and then we drove around looking at other decorated houses. When we got home, we exchanged gifts. I gave him a Hamm's Bear T-shirt, a red panda bobblehead, and a coffee table book of the Graduate Hotels, since he's really into college sports stuff. He gave me an Aran cable knit blanket in Kelly green, a pillow that says "Merry Christmas to you" in Irish, and a book about the making of the show The Office. Here are some photos. The first couple are from my Advent calendar, which started out so well but then became a disappointment. The last few days there was nothing in the windows, and you can see that I only have four crystals when I should have seven.
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