12/20/24 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Secret Santa Shop

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

For many years I have read, Charles Dicken’s classic novel, A Christmas Carol at this time of year. I have an old and worn copy stuffed with mint condition two-dollar bills from the 1920’s inside of it, which I examine each year that I take it off the shelf. 

After the Mass and Christmas Eve family activities I have two traditions: entering the world of Ebeneezer Scrooge and watching midnight Mass with the Pope at St. Peter’s in the Vatican. Each pulls at my heartstrings in different ways. 

Each Sunday I have different moments of spiritual clarity when presented with the readings of the day and the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, when I read Dickens, I am always struck by some new passage. 

Although I know the story well and can even quote some of the lines, there is always something fresh to discover. 

This week I am listening to A Christmas Carol on my car ride into school. Hearing it read to me, has brought a freshness to the timely work. In Stave III, when Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas present, the following passage stuck out to me most vividly: 

“The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'! Nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses. It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious.” 

Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, clashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas [jack]daws to peck at if they chose.” 

“But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces.”

May your Christmas be filled with good food of every kind, shared with family and friends. And may Our Lady of Peace Church, indeed all churches, be filled this Christmas with people “flocking” to get in the doors. 

May you and yours have a Blessed Christmas! 

Jim Silcott