christmas musing

can you believe it that for this year i put up my christmas tree (picture above) only on 24 dec, i.e. christmas eve. well i guess for those who know me well enough that i always leave things to last minute, they can believe it! haha.

anyway, to us catholics, there are 12 days to christmas, so i’ll have the tree down only on the 12th day – 6 jan, the feast of the epiphany. i realised many who had the tree up early (as early as nov.) were non christians. i guess they have it up early because then they would take it down immediately after 25 dec. this is not the case with me. christmas is over only after 6 january!
well for the past 5 years i did not have a christmas tree as i decided to do away with tree and had a crib (nativity scene) instead, as i felt a crib is more meaningful to depict christmas – birth of jesus. however, this year i decided to bring back the tree… but just a small table sized one. i couldn’t find a table-sized one but managed to get the smallest at 2 feet. well i did put up the crib too, together with the tree. for a picture of the crib, you may go to my previous posting about the crib.

i got one of these new design christmas tree. it is spring type and is flat like a pancake when not in use, like this:

when you want to use it, just lift up the top and use the long stand to hold it up. it comes in two colours – green and silver, and two designs, one with leaves and one with stars. i picked the silver stars one. this is how it looks like when it is ‘put up’.

this is how it looks after some decoration (only gold balls and gold bells), with the ‘8 patterns light’.

the very first picture (right on top) you see here is this same tree of course, taken by same camera, same time, same place, same lighting (no, not when the lights were off)… but when i adjusted to ‘twilight’ mode. a huge difference i see.
this christmas i did not attend the midnight mass on the eve but attended the morning mass since i had to do the duty of commentating. quite a lot of people in church, i see. i spy a tourist bus parked in front of our church and i guess the bus must had bought some catholic tourist from some nearby hotels to attend the mass. yep, a group of ‘mat salleh’ about 30 or so can be seen inside the church.

last sunday i attended the ‘filipino community christmas celebration’ at the wonderland restaurant in komtar. the catholics filipino in penang congregates in our church for mass and gatherings. they use the church as a ‘base’ for all the catholics filipino in penang.

actually this celebration is open to their community only but i was invited as a guest (among some other invited guests too) on account of me being a worker for the church. they had many activities lined up e.g. awards of long service, karaoke contests, singing and dancing. the picture below here shows one of the dance. they used huge pillow cases to draw faces on the cases and then pull the cases over their heads. they look cute, eh?

i’m still in christmas mood so no posts grumbling about the gomen yet. haha. this whole week i’m on leave from work but unfortunately i still have to drop in the office as i have unfinished works to be done. 🙁