Today is the Third Day of Christmas.  It is also the Feast of St. Stephen or St. Stephen’s Day according to the Eastern Church.  But the Western Church celebrates it on December 26, which was yesterday.  However, yesterday I was blogging about Boxing Day, which is a holiday that people I know celebrate.  I don’t [...]

Happy Boxing Day, Canadians! Since my mother-in-law lives in Canada, I’m sure she’s celebrating Boxing Day.  It used to be, back in the day, when everybody gave a goody box to people like the mailman.  Now it’s the day everybody goes shopping, rather like Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) in the United States.  One [...]

Today is the fourth and last Sunday of Advent.  Christmas is almost upon us.  For four weeks we have waited for this day.  We started out with Hope.  We started out remembering our sins and our need for a Savior and the prophecies to the People of God telling them that God would send them [...]

This is the third week of Advent.  This Sunday is sometimes also called Gaudete Sunday because the first word of the latin liturgy is gaudete, which is translated: Rejoice.  The theme of this Sunday is joy, and instead of a purple candle, the pink candle is lit.  This Sunday marks a change in mood from the [...]

Advent continues.  Today is the second Sunday of Advent and the start of the second week of Advent.  We continue to look forward to Jesus’ coming–both in anticipating Christmas and in anticipating his coming again.  For celebrating Jesus’ Advent must needs include both a looking back and a looking forward–it must include more than one [...]

The Sunday before last, November 23, I was able to attend Jeremy’s frocking ceremony at his command.  He got promoted today from Petty Officer Second Class to Petty Officer First Class.  That means he went up one pay grade, from E-5 to E-6. In the Navy every March and September sailors take advancement exams.  Out [...]

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.  It’s hard to believe that the Christmas season is here already.  But Thanksgiving is over, and that means Christmas is right around the corner. I’ve been reading up on Advent over the last few days.  None of the churches I attended growing up celebrated Advent, so I wasn’t [...]

Jeremy and I went to two parties today.  First we went to his command’s party at his Master Chief’s house.  We ate turkey and talked and those who wanted to played Guitar Hero (I think that’s what it’s called–where each person plays a different instrument in the band going off of the prompts on screen [...]

I’m not Catholic, and as far as I know I’m not Irish, and I’m not from Boston (although I have been there, although not in the fall), but I still think Saint Patrick’s Day is fun.  Besides I think Jeremy has some Irish ancestry on his mother’s side so that counts, right? The thing I [...]

    Today is the start of December.  Around base Christmas trees are going up.  They put a big one up outside last week.  Sometime this coming week they are going to have a tree lighting ceremony/party during which you can get your picture taken with Santa and the Christmas camel.  I didn’t even know there [...]