A Merry Hurley Christmas Everyone

Well, after a busy day yesterday starting first and foremost with Midnight Mass, we had all the usual fun - gifts in the morning, Christmas Dinner, snooze time, Queen's Speech, afternoon/evening games then some films & comedies with drinks n snacks.

And so on St Stephen's Day, aka Boxing Day, aka the second day of Christmas may I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas.

And like Tintin, let's all remember the "reason for the season" and honour the Holy Family.

Nadolig Llawen! Merry Christmas!

Remember GKC is For Life - Not Just for Christmas

GKC is on the Tree by G. Hurley

At last! At last! Oh felicity.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Nativity.

Oh happiness and peace profound
When family are gathered 'round.

The Christ-child born, the greatest day.
Our festivities are under-way.

Our joy is complete when we see
GKC on our Christmas tree.

St Stephen's Day: Family China and the Tale of St Margaret Clitherow

Yes it's St Stephen's Day (when St Wenceslas "looked out" on his favourite pizza - deep pan, crisp and even) aka Boxing Day. So it's been cold cuts, left-over Christmas dinner, and bits n bobs.

Another opportunity to get out our favourite Christmas china - our 12 Days of Christmas set of plates, each with the presents given on each of the 12 days of Christmas (from Christmas Day to Epiphany).

Calm down Old Pa Hurley, they did not cost a king's ransom - these were bought for £3 at a car boot, albeit in foreign parts (England).

Now you may not know this, but the poem/song 'The 12 Days of Christmas' is Catholic in origin. It came about after Elizabeth I reneged on her Coronation oath to uphold the Catholic faith and walked out of the Coronation Mass as the Blessed Sacrament was elevated by the priest.

She made England, Wales and Ireland protestant by forcing through a law whilst some of the Bishops were waylaid by her hirelings, so not only did she break her oath, but she forced through a law by guile that would never have gotten through otherwise.

After this it became illegal to celebrate Mass, attend a Mass or to house a priest. People had to to go to her protestant services or face fines and property confiscations. "Good Queen Bess" my backside!

And so, from circa 1558 to circa 1829, Catholics were forced underground, those who had the courage, stamina and fortitude to continue with the Faith of their Fathers.

If you want to know how cruelly and horrifyingly normal Catholics were treated, look up the treatment of St Margaret Clitherow, whose only crime was in having Masses celebrated in her home. She was crushed to death, whilst probably pregnant, at the age of 33.

The 12 Days of Christmas came about as a means of teaching each other, and especially the young, all about their Catholic faith, but in a hidden way - in the days when priests had to hide and the faithful lived in fear of their livelihood, property and lives.

As Catholic.net says:

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” celebrates the official Christmas season which starts liturgically on Christmas Day and ends twelve days later on the Feast of the Epiphany. “My true love” refers to God, “me” is the individual Catholic. The “twelve lords a leaping” are the twelve basic beliefs of the Catholic Church as outlined in the Apostles Creed. The “eleven pipers piping” are the eleven Apostles who remained faithful after the treachery of Judas. The “ten ladies dancing” are the Ten Commandments. The “nine drummers drumming” are the nine choirs of angels which in those days of class distinction were thought important. The “eight maids a milking” are the Eight Beatitudes. The “seven swans a swimming” are the Seven Sacraments. The “six geese a laying” are the Six Commandments of the Church or the six days of creation. The “five golden rings” are the first five books of the Old Testament called the Torah which are generally considered the most sacred and important of all the Old Testament. The “four calling birds” are the Four Gospels. The “three French hens” are the Three Persons in God or the three gifts of the Wise Men. The “two turtle doves” represent the two natures in Jesus: human and divine or the two Testaments, Old and New. The “partridge” is the piece de resistance, Jesus himself, and the “pear tree” is the Cross.

Merry Christmas from The Hurley Family

A very Merry Hurley Christmas to you all!

This was the teapot my dear wife received from Santa. All very exciting.

Merry Hurley Christmas 2011. You bet!

Countdown to Christmas at Hurley Towers

Oh joy... that mad period before Christmas when work is so overwhelming is coming to an end.

Now we can start to get ready for Christmas festivities. Hoorah!

Get the logs in for the fire. Get to Confession in time for Christmas day. And stock up on the pork pies and itchy-gum cheese. Drop off the last few Christmas cards to friends and neighbours.

I may even have a sneaky foaming ale or two (otherwise Old Pa Hurley may think I've gone  a bit 'ginger').

Only a few little doors left on our Advent calendar. It's all very exciting.

One in the Eye of Richard Dawkins and his ilk

Today at Mass one of the readings was of the Annunciation, that moment which gives us the first part of the Hail Mary (Hail full of Grace, the Lord is with thee).

Of course Mary's submission to the Will of God, meant that the Incarnation of Christ could happen. The whole of creation was dependent on the submission of Mary, the second Eve.

What a beautiful moment - perhaps the most important moment in the history of the world, for it enabled Christ the Saviour to be born - the event we are all about to celebrate.

Back in the Summer I picked up an old Missal at a car boot in Swansea for £1 or so (you can imagine I skipped home). It contains some beautiful colour illustrations, including this one, which shows The Annunciation.

It's easy at Christmas time to get lost in the consumerism and some of the schmaltz, so let's remember this Christmas that we are indeed celebrating the Incarnation, made possible by Mary the Mother of God.

And if any atheists try to tell you otherwise you have my permission to tweak their nose, kick them up the Khyber and tell them we will not live in a new Soviet regime!

Merry Christmas!

Are You Opening Those Advent Calendars?

I hope you all opened the first door in your NATIVITY Advent Calendars today.

And not a Coca-Mc-Cadbury 'Happy Holidays' Snowman choc-fest one either.

Advent has begun. Let us prepare for CHRISTMAS.

Here's a wonderful icon, reminding us that Mary is the Mother of God, and the sacred nature of life in the womb.

November Winterval Warning

Birmingham Council pushes Winterval in 1997!

T'was the month before Christmas
When all through our land,
 Not a Christian was praying

Nor taking a stand. 

See the PC Police had taken away

The reason for Christmas - no one could say.
The children were told by their schools not to sing
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things. 

It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say

December 25th is just a ' Holiday'.
Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it! 

CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-Pod

Something was changing, something quite odd!
Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa

In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda. 

As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.
At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears      

You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.
 

Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.
Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzer
 On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!
 

At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.   
And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith

 Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace
 

The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.
So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.
 

Choose your words carefully, 

choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS,

not Happy Holiday!
 
Please, all Christians join together and
wish everyone you meet
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Christ is The Reason' for the Christ-mas Season! 


===

A big thanks to Uncle Maynard from America for sending this to his favourite (I believe he says "top of the will") nephew-in-law.


Stand up for Christmas oh itinerants of the blogosphere! Not since the heretic Oliver Cromwell has Christmas been under such an attack.

Advent Calendars and the Downfall of the West

No Cadbury's, no!

Advent in Welsh is known as "Winter Lent" the name goes back to when these islands were Catholic (hurrah!) before the Reformation (boo), and people would fast in preparation for the Feast of Christmas.

In those days the good people of Wales (OK, and England too) would prepare themselves for Christmas, and following Christmas Day would celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas until Epiphany - the day the Wise Men visited the Infant Christ, the first gentiles to see and worship the Son of God.

Spot the difference?

Today Christmas at its consumerist best seems to start mid November, rattles on for weeks and weeks, then by the time Christmas Day arrives, and folks eat even more chocolate than they have in the whole run-up to Christmas, a lot of people are all Christmas'd out, can't wait for Christmas to be over with, get into the shops for the sales on Boxing Day...

Where have the Twelve Days of Christmas gone? Where has the Winter Lent of Advent gone? Like all our Feast Days that used to be dotted across the calendar - they have been robbed from us, by a robber band of merchant Protestants (or morecorrectly the Mammonistas!) who saw our old traditions as a barrier to working the poor 364 days a year.

Even in my own lifetime I have seen the demise of the traditional (semi-)religious Advent calendar with its little pictures, culminating on the 24th with a double-doored picture of the Nativity, so the excitement and the reminder of what Christmas was all about was brought home to the wee bairns on Christmas Eve.

Advent calendars originated in Germany

Now, as I potter around and rarely walk about shops (having an aversion to spending money, I am my father's son) all I tend to see are chocolate-filled calendars, most with very little to do with the Christian Feast Day of Christmas at all. They may have a Coca-Cola style Santa, a snowman, little elves, or even a pop band, singer or wotnot on the front.

Bleuch.

So I am pleading with all my army of readers (yes, both of you) to not cave-in the chocolate Cadbury (owned by Kraft Foods anyway) calendars! We'll all eat enough chocolate and other goodies over Christmas anyway -- so whether buying for the grandchildren, children or the kids next door: choose an old fashioned Advent calendar, with a bit of Bethlehem about it!

In our own small way we can get Christmas back to being Christmas, and the period beforehand all about the anticipation of the coming of the Christ Child, as Leonardo Da Vinci might say the Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World).

As the greatest Englishman of the 20th Century put it:

"There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes."
- G.K. Chesterton

GKC will be chuffed to know that's what I think too.

A Very Hurley Merry Christmas to You All

A very Merry Christmas to all readers of my humble blog.

That's all family and friends, all Hurleys, and anyone of great taste.

I hope you all had a Happy and Holy Christmas and that St Nicholas brought you all enough little presents to make the Holy Feast memorable.

My one tip for next year for those of you with children: take them to Midnight Mass.

We had to wake the children up at 8am (previous years they woke us up - 6, 5 and even 4am taking their toll!).

We didn't even have to snooze off Christmas dinner on the sofa.

I threatened to do an Old Pa Hurley trick and have my photo taken wearing my Christmas presents. One year he has underpants, socks and a watch. They sight of him posing for a photo is indelibly seared on the memories of all present. I might sue for damages in a few years time...

But as I only had a shirt and a pair of doctor martens, I think the children would have called the police.


P.S. For those of you hanging on my every culinary word (I know, my kitchen skills are fabled, i.e. I can burn water) we had beef and duck for Christmas dinner. Very, very nice! My tip every year is to make mountains of extra roasties to eat cold for a couple of days with the leftover meat etc. Yum yum stretch my tum.

It's Nearly Christmas!

I am still a child at heart and so I still get excited by Christmas, and get caught up in all the joy of the Nativity.

Being an ardent Pro-Lifer I was pleased to see this poster too: a great reminder of how Christ too was an unborn child (and a humble one at that!).

Can Christmas Get Any Better?

You know the saying 'if Mohammed cant go to the mountain...'* Well, if there isn't a GKC Christmas Party (see my last post), then it is a duty of every red blooded Catholic to create one in the bosom of his own home!

Let's think of the ingredients we need:

1. Good food (that should be a given anyway, surely in a good - or bad - Catholic household). Funnily enough I was watching Fern Britton interview Clarissa Dickson Wright about her life and the Two Fat Ladies, and how they, her and Jennifer Paterson, were Catholics, went to Mass when filming, had to have the Saints Days on the scripts - if you get a chance watch it on iplayer. I was surprised to see such a moving, heartwarming programme which gave a positive light to our Faith.

Anyway, good food abounds at Christmas (following our shriving at Advent- a local retired Bishop often says that in Welsh, Advent was known as Winter Lent, i.e. a time of preparation for the Feast of Christmas). If between meals always have a stash of pork pies handy in the fridge. 

2. A wee tipple. You can toast the great man with a wee dram or perchance a healthy glass of Brains SA. If you are unfortunate enough to live outside Wales, then see your local ale specialist about procuring supplies of Brains SA, it really will be worth your while.

3. Put Christ back in Christmas. With the growing secularisation of our society (which GKC warned about 100 years ago) many people bemoan the taking of Christ from celebrations. The most extreme example was Birmingham's "Winterval."  As well as sending out cards with the Holy Family on, make sure your home has a Nativity Scene and, where possible, your Christmas decorations (and Advent calendars) have a Christian flavour.

4. And don't forget GKC. Read a little (or a lot!) of the great man at Christmas. Maybe a novel (try The Flying Inn) or a poem (try The Battle of Lepanto) or why not even go the whole hog and try a book (try the Everlasting Man). According to the Wikipedia page on the book:

In a letter to Sheldon Vanauken (December 14, 1950) ^[1] [C.S.] Lewis calls the book "the best popular apologetic I know," and to Rhonda Bodle he wrote (December 31, 1947) ^[2] "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man."

5. Make sure Christian Carols are sung, played, in short are present in your home. Some favourites include Hark the Herald Angels Sing, O Holy Night, Silent Night, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Oh Come All Ye Faithful/Adeste Fidelis, The First Noel, Joy to the World, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen... All of which place the Infant Christ at the centre of Christmas.

6. Don't forget Confession during Advent, and Mass throughout of course. All the celebrations, quaffing etc. lead to Christmas Mass and the remembrance that the infant Christ went on to give us the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Follow these 6 steps and you too can have a Happy, Holy, Wise, Merry and Joyful Christmas.

*Not being a Muslim it was a moot point whether to use a heathen quote, but I once asked a Mohammedan at an eatery in Brick Lane if he knew of this quote, and he responded that despite studying the Koran he had never heard of it. That's my get out clause anyway.

GKC Christmas Party? Wine & Pork Pies Surely!

I was very excited on seeing the headline "GKC Christmas Party."

Being a huge GK Chesterton (aka GKC) fan - though not as huge as the great man himself, whose cause for canonisation is well under way - I envisaged a wonderfully warm, witty gathering of great minds and friendly faces, quaffing wine (very continental and dare I say Catholic) and pork pies (quintessentially English and against all the dietary fads that GKC would have poked fun at).

How disappointed was I to find out that the GKC Christmas Party was in fact being held by the Greenville Kennel Club - the clue being in the name.

Oh well.

My tweeds, extra padding and GKC wig will have to go back to the hire shop.

Still it could have been worse - I could have booked the ticket to America, or even to Australia for the GKC Christmas meet. I was excited to read that they would be having fish n chips.... though what/who is "Barwon Heads Pup" and how you would eat it has left me perplexed. Sounds positively Korean.

All of which GKC, the king of the paradox, would have found highly amusing.

Here he is at his best with The Problem With Modern Man:

‘But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.' (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1909).

"Rebel" students take note...