Last night we went to "midnight" mass (started at 11 pm) in Saint-Ghislain. The choir sang for a half hour before the service began, but the mass itself had only two hymns, "O Come All Ye Faithful," which when it went from Latin to French became "Faithful People, the Lord is Calling You," and a pretty drippy piece that would translate something like "Peace Is Here upon Us." Since it has no corresponding English-language version, it didn't sound Christmas-y at all to us. But then after the mass was ended, the choir did a carol to the tune of--I kid you not--"The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The chorus was something like "Glory, glory hallelujah, today is Christmas Day!" We near 'bout died when we heard it start. The congregation stayed around to listen and applauded at the end, but we couldn't tell if it was because it was a song they knew or what. We sang along with the chorus. Then they served sparkling wine.
In other Christmas news, this is what our yard looked like up until a few hours before Christmas. As we mentioned in an earlier post, we had what for Belgium is a lot of snow late last week and over the weekend. Then the weather came to its sense, it started raining, and by late Christmas Eve all the snow was gone. Now it's damp, dreary, and about 40 F. But it's the Feast of the Nativity, so all is well.
Merry Christmas to all of our readers from David, Rita, the girls, Stephan, and Belgium.
1 comment:
Interesting church experience. You have said in the past that the Belgians really like the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
We heard a sermon that painted a different picture of the manger based on what the Inn was probably really like in a non tourist town. Over the years we have read a lot of assunptions into the Luke story. Did you know that the "inn" was probably a single guest room and not a Sheraton type inn since Bethlehem was not yet a tourist center? The manger was likely a trough between the living area and the place where the animals were brought in at night. There is no mention of a stable by Luke.
I like the way the Belgiam church ended its mass -- with sparkling wine. Way to go!
Merry Christmas!
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