This Sunday evening, Dec 21st, Megan and I went out to the
Anglican church in Bangkok to attend an evening hymn sing they were having. Neither of us is Anglican (Episcopalian, for you Americans), but the carols were lovely, and it was really great to have a
Christmassy religious service to go to and a carol sing wrapped into one. On Christmas eve, we'll probably be attending that same church's midnight communion. I've done that a few times back in Saint Lambert with some of my brothers on Christmases past. One time everyone was called up for communion, but we were told that if we weren't baptised we could just put our hands palms-down when it came our turn, and the minister would just bless us instead. My brother Richard apparently missed the memo, though, because we all went back and sat down afterwards and was like "hey, that was a good wafer".
It was funny at the time. I do miss Christmas in Quebec, but Christmas in Bangkok is actually shaping up to be a pretty lovely substitute, so far. See
my other blog for all the carols I've been singing lately.
Megan brought me yesterday to Mater Dei the all-girls Catholic school she teaches at weekday mornings. They were having a "Christmas party", which actually turned out to be a Christmas pageant, followed by a Christmas ballet, no mingling or punch-drinking, or any of the things normal for an event you might refer to as a party. Still, it was interesting and festive. They had the school choir singing "O Holy Night" and "Let There Be Peace On Earth" and the pageant narration was all in Thai, but it wasn't too hard to follow, it being the nativity story and all. The ballet that followed was "Sleeping Beauty", we were told, although you wouldn't know it from the performance. They had brought in one guy to dance the part of (I assume) the charming prince. At one point during the nativity pageant, all the kindergarten girls Megan teaches hopped out on to the stage wearing bunny suits and did a little hopping dance to an instrumental version of "Let it Snow", if I'm not mistaken. See pictures below.
Merry Christmas, everyone! I'll post pictures of more festive stuff tonight or tomorrow.
