my whole life is held together with duct tape

At church this morning, they piled greenery in the corner of the basement and a woman made bows out of wide stiff ribbon. I gathered a fistful of pine and holly and tied on a bright red bow. I stopped at the store on my way home, and bought too many groceries, and stuffed the greenery under my arm so I could carry all the bags. 

Back home, between the smell of pine and the gingerbread scented candle, Christmas seemed to have arrived. The only thing missing was the music. I have a couple of Christmas albums, but none of them seemed quite right. Since the reading in church, I had been singing, "Oh, thou that tellest good tidings to Zion... Lift it up, Be not afraid!" and suddenly I realized that what I needed to really bring Christmas into my apartment was Handel's Messiah.

There were difficulties. I do not have a functional cd player (the cd/dvd drive in my computer is broken - everything I own is broken, it seems), and buying the 53 songs of the Messiah on iTunes would cost, well, $53. Minus 53 cents. So $52.47. That seemed like a lot, considering that some of those songs are 19 seconds long. 

Determined, however, I called around until I found a store that had the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir version of the Messiah in stock (this is the version my mom has; I asked her), and I went downtown among tourists and sparkling lights and homeless people to buy it for $13.99. I am now listening to it on the tiny, old, portable dvd player (c. 2000) that my friend gave me when my dvd drive broke. It plays cds, too, apparently. The sound isn't very good, though, and my next step in bootleg-ness is to figure out some way to connect it to my iPod speaker.

I am surprised to find that I know nearly all the words to nearly all the songs in the Messiah. I expected to find come parts of it unfamiliar, but I do not. I suppose that it makes sense that I would know most all of it, since we have been listening to it every Christmas season since I was born, first on numerous tapes in Liberia, and then on cds in Michigan. 

I am singing along, "Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice greatly!"

It has been a long time since I could start Christmas this early. For the last six Christmases, I have been in Africa, in law school, or in between places. I had quarterly reports and then exams and then bar applications to worry me. Despite the feeling that I never quite will catch up and that days have fewer and fewer hours in them, I have more time to enjoy this season than I have had in many years, and I am enjoying it. 

I wonder if I have the space to roll out cookie dough.