Bizarre Belgian church experience no. 931

The Christmas edition

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.

In our backyard

We have pheasants. If you don't know anything about them, they don't fly a lot. even if you do know a lot about them, they still don't fly. Despite what you see in wildlife photos, they prefer to run from danger, which is one reason they're prized as game birds. Since it's not considered sporting to shoot them on the ground (you wonder who made up these rules), the trick is to flush them into the air. In the olden days you would have used a servant. Now you would use a dog. Or that the brother-in-law you've never cared for.

Where have all the plowers gone?

Apparently Belgium does not own a snowplow. Or road salt. We were up in Waterloo this afternoon. Yes, the Waterloo. It snowed…oh, maybe 3 inches. It took us 3 hours to make the 35-minute trip back. Even once we had spent 2 hours to go less than 2 miles to the R0 (Brussels' beltway), that four-lane interstate-type highway was covered in crusty, icy, snow. No plow in sight. No salt anywhere. Just lots of cars moving very slowly.

Oh, and the Belgians have discovered that if you press the pedal all the way to the floor on icy roads and make your wheels spin really fast…you don't go anywhere. But they keep trying, like this time might be the time it works and my car leaps forward. Straight into the car stopped dead 10 feet in front of me.

Les Fêtes patronales

Back at the end of November and beginning of December we kept seeing ads for restaurant menus for the fêtes patronales. We knew it wasn't Belgian national day and were pretty sure it wasn't the king's birthday or anything like that, but didn't really know what all the fuss was about. On Friday, 4 Dec., the bank was closed and the cleaning ladies cleared out of our building before 11:00, early even for a Friday. We were perplexed. So finally I googled it. Turns out Belgians celebrate three big saints days in the first week of December:

- 1 Dec: Saint Eloi, or Eligius, bishop of Noyon-Tournai (just down the road from us) and the patron saint of goldsmiths, other metalworkers, and coin collectors;

- 4 Dec: Sainte Barb or Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen, military engineers, miners and others who work with explosives because of her old legend's association with lightning, and mathematicians. We also heard, the first year we were here, that she's the patron saint of firemen. Ironically, one of our favorite stores in Mons burned down on Sainte-Barbe (see our blog posting from 5 January 2008).

- 6 Dec: Saint Nicholas, who is, according to one source, the patron saint of "several classes of people, especially, in the East, of sailors and in the West, of children."

So we added another bit of cultural trivia to our growing collection.

Will we never stop being afraid?

In the last week, hand sanitizer dispensing stations have appeared all over SHAPE. I've yet to see anyone use one, but they're everywhere. I assume this came from the US and is happening there too. It also mirrors the latest theological development. There now appear to be three elements of the Eucharist: the bread, the cup, and alcohol-based Purell. Because of course Jesus would have worried about germs in the Upper Room. But we Anglicano-Episcopalians have resisted the frenzy. And guess what? No one has died.

Another slightly bizarre church experience

Last week I tried to go to church in Tertre, the next village over. The schedule says Mass is at 9:15 there every week. I got there and saw only one other car in the parking lot, and the church was locked up tight. The lady from the other car was as perplexed as I, since she had actually called and was told there would be a Mass. Oh well. Another example of the mysterious Belgian Mass schedule.

I decided to give it another shot this week, figuring, what are the odds Mass would be cancelled or changed two weeks in a row. I guessed right; there was indeed a service. Today was the feast of Christ the King, so we celebrated that. In addition, for some reason I didn't catch, the offertory involved bringing baskets of rolls up to the altar. It was also the feast of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, so before Mass ended the congregation honored the organist and the cantor with small gifts. Before we were dismissed there was an announcement that they'd be giving out the rolls. And that the blessing of horses would follow immediately after the service.

Huh?

I thought maybe I'd misunderstood or they were going to go out to some farm to bless some guy's horses. But when I walked out of the church to the parking lot, there was a line of horses and riders waiting for their blessing. I then realized why the stable I'd passed on the way over there had been a beehive of activity at such an early hour: students from the riding school were preparing to ride their horses the short distance over to the church. So there they were, waiting patiently for their blessing. I wished I'd had a camera.

Bastogne

Saturday Mickey and I visited the Battle of the Bulge battlefield--or part of it. The thing was huge. You may have read that somewhere. In fact, our guide pointed that out as a feature of mechanized warfare: battlefields are bigger than they used to be--much bigger. Our "guide" was the commander of the unit Rita and I work in. He is a historian who has studied this battle extensively, and he served in the 101st Airborne, which was the US unit that defended the surrounded town of Bastogne, Belgium.

We stopped first at Elsenborn Ridge, where US forces really started to stop the attack. It diverted the German thrust aimed at Liège to the south and constricted the northern shoulder of the advance, basically keeping the bulge a bulge, instead of letting it become the second overrunning of Belgium that Hitler hoped for. This is a monument to the 26th of the 1st--the US 1st Infantry Division, 26th Regiment, which dug in and fought along a ridge line part of which you can see low on the horizon.

Next on the itinerary was a piece of the Siegfried line. These are the "dragon's teeth" tank traps that marked the German border. A two-lane highway runs along the border. Walk across the road, and you're in Belgium.

Third stop was a copse of woods where an isolated recon platoon (maybe that's redundant) fought a battle against a German battalion. As we traveled the battlefield, it started to become clear that the German advance was slowed to no small degree by individual actions by US units of various sizes that were outmanned and outgunned. But not outfought.

The positions from this action are still there--a little eroded, but still there. You could spot the machine gun pits and the foxholes the riflemen dug.

This is the view they had of the German battalion coming at them, only it was covered with snow.

And the little memorial to the men who fought here. It's in some farmer's back yard. A hand-lettered sign on the road points you to it. The farmer has left a corner of his yard for people to park in.

A slightly bigger memorial on which to end. This was erected at the point where the German attack on Bastogne stopped. They got no further. In the center is a stone inscribed, Liberatoribus Americanis populus Belgicus memor. The Belgian people remember the American liberators.