Wesołych Świąt!* Here's what you missed at Midnight Mass with my friend and her family this evening:
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- live pheasants, chickens, and other fowl arranged in humane-looking enclosures around the altar
- multiple giant stuffed bears, deer, elk, and wild boar, prostrate before the manger and adjacent to huge metal farming implements
- a moon over the manger which flickered from new to wax to full to wane to new, every minute, for two hours
- a functioning windmill inside the church, adjacent to the Bethlehem-of-the-North scene
- instrumental versions of both I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas and Jingle Bells played by a lone trumpeter during communion
- a gold applique of John Paul II on the priest's alb

And of course, the whole Midnight Mass endeavor was made more relaxing and enjoyable by the things which came before:
- a twelve-course Christmas Eve dinner with six fish dishes and an endless stream of pierogi
- coffee and cake followed by homemade coconut and beer liqueurs (how do you make liqueur from beer?)
- watching Hancock and Taken with Polish subtitles

All in all, a wonderful day!

And: I'm going back over to the friend's house tomorrow to have a meat-based Christmas Day meal! Whoo!

*Merry Christmas! Say it with me: "veh-SO-wih shvee-ONT"!