December 31, 2021

My husband's parents have a hot tub, and it's snowed here in Gig Harbor. So hot tubbing feels like some kind of winter alpine resort. And the tub has little roving rainbow lights under the water that light up the bubbles in blue, green, and turquoise. What a nice time. 

I remembered that I wanted to talk about how we went to a Christmas Eve service at my husband's parents' church. It's one of those big-ish churches, used to be Presbyterian but split from that denomination because it felt that the Presbyterians had gotten too liberal. Toooooo liberal. It has gotten rid of a choir in favor of a worship band. With LED spotlights of changeable colors.  Middle-aged musicians singing with their hands raised. It's Christmas, though, and I was excited about the various bangers: O! Holy Night!, Silent Night, the Hallelujah Chorus, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.  We've been drinking all week, so we all had beers before we went. I had a weed gummy. The congregation was packed. Barely anyone had masks on. I sang my face off and enjoyed the whole thing thoroughly. Although, I expect the fact that church no longer rankles me the way it used to is a sign of me being further from that culture, not closer. I don't feel so threatened anymore by what they expect from people inside of Christianity. Instead, it feels like I get to be a tourist in an eccentric environment. One where you get to sing badly and around other people -- delightful. Where people talk about a fantasy land where you go after you die. Of a creator who's got great plans for your life but suffers from some kind of communication problem when it comes to relaying those plans. Mysterious. Where they teach that men need to run households, but half the congregation is definitely run by women, and no one bats an eye. Where you can get drunk and high and end up looking passionate and pious, singing mangled contemporized versions of classic Christmas songs that -- being perfect -- have lasted hundreds of years and will last hundreds of years more, no matter how silly we've rendered them in 2021.