Handel's Messiah 2025

 Each Christmas I try and attend the Messiah Community sing at St. Olaf's Catholic Church in downtowm Minneapolis. I begin thinking about it in fall, when the first chill is in the air, and thoughts turn to the coming winter and Christmas. 

It's always on a Sunday night downtown. If the weather is bad, or really cold, I think about backing out. That happened this year. It was around 8 or 9F when the concert started. But for the 8th year in a row, excluding the covid cancellations, we went, my wife and I. 

While I am not a singer there is this really good sense of Christmasing that comes over me when the music starts. I let go with my permanently off key rendition of the masterpiece. The crowd is a mix. Many like me, who welcome the large crowd to drown out their mistakes. Others, professional or semi-so, lift high their beautiful voices to proclaim "unto to us a child is born" "speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem" 'they have turn-ed every one to his own way" "He shall reign for ever and ever" "by his stripes we are healed". 

They are dressed in suits, smart Christmas dresses, elf costumes, Santa hats, buffalo plaid shirts and dresses. A gathering of devout followers of the true Messiah and a few, perhaps, non-believers. All drawn by the spell of Christmas into something deeper than elf on the shelf and Christmas cookies. 

Christmas. Christmas. Christmas. 

It is well that we cannot see the future

 Today my wife busted the mailbox door when she got out of the car to check the mail. In closing the car door it hit the mailbox door and broke one of the plastic hinges. Clearly an accident. (Perhaps.) It could have been me. (But not likely). 

I was the one who got to go out in the snow with the temp a balmy 19F. Back and forth I went. To the tool shed, to the mail box, to the tool shed, to the garage, to the house for gloves. Dropped a screw in the snow, which can only be retrieved barehanded. Dropped it again. Dropped a wingnut. Finally I reverted to my first thought, wire. Drilled a couple of holes and macgyvered a solution. Hopefully will last til spring. Gotta get back in the house. 

With a big mug of hot chocolate I start working on this blog entry. My phone rings. My wife it is. "I'm at the mall. The dash says one of my tires only has 14 lbs". Gee, same as the air temp now. "Which mall?" "OK. I'm on my way"

Back to the title of this post. In the summer of 1979 had I known that this day was coming, especially the mailbox part, I might not have married her. It is well that I cannot see the future.