Merry 10th day of Christmas

Catholics just have to get used to being counter-cultural. Before Christmas, well, it's not Christmas yet. And then it finally gets here and everyone throws away their trees and wreaths at the beginning of the real party. Have you ever found yourself feeling silly wishing people a Merry Christmas after New Year's Day? But they never feel silly doing it the first of December...

(Of course, if I always avoided what feels silly, I would never wear anything but jumpers and polo shirts. I'm working on that one, honest.)

Tonight I went with my mother to the wake of my grandmother's friend. It was a good Irish wake, full of laughter and smiles and the occasional sympathetic nod- an occasion for lots of kisses from people who mistook me for my mother, and more from people who were trying to figure out which Golden I was. (I'm not, but it's nice to hear.)

Sorry if the loose grammar here offends anyone- it's mostly laziness and partially an effort to not be so pernickity about word use. (I live in a mostly ESL house, where my preference for syntactical integrity is not commonly shared, and is the object of many a rolled eye.)

God bless.