Chreasters, if you’re not familiar with the phrase, are those people who show up for church twice a year, on Christmas and Easter. And how they used to p*** me off — especially those who saved a whole row of seats with their coats, so that one family member would give you dirty looks as you desperately tried to find seats for your own family. And at the same time, in order to get seats for my own family, I felt obliged to play the same game.
This year — well, let me tell you, life is a lot easier when your kids are old enough that (especially due to the magic of phones with games to play) you can all arrive a half-hour early (actually more like 35 minutes early), find a good seat up front, and just wait for mass to start. No more stress to get everyone ready. No more splitting up and having the younger kids come later so they’d have less time to wait and get squirmy. And this year neither my parents nor my sister were here, so that’s three fewer people to worry about when they’re ready, and, let’s face it, none of them are exactly the sort of people that are ready for anything early. Plus, my middle son decided, after having gotten a proper suit for homecoming, that he wanted to wear it to church, so we bypassed the usual nagging the kids to wear nice clothes.
I felt wonderfully insulated from all the stress, especially being up front, so that not only were we not desperate seat-searchers, but we didn’t have to watch the seat-searching. Plus, as a bonus, sitting up front meant that I didn’t get irritated by people passively listening rather than singing, because front-row people are more likely to sing. And, the choir sang the Christmas version of the Hallelujah song, and that was very nicely done. The whole thing was blissful.
And while being well aware that it’s a fortunate consequence of not having young children any longer, I felt much cheerier, much more willing to welcome (even if just in my own mind — I was hardly going to voice a “welcome” that would unintentionally offend longtime parishioners that I simply didn’t know) the irregular attenders. “Hey, aren’t our priest’s shiny vestments cool?” “Hey, did’ja like his homily?” “Hey, that’s my son playing trumpet!”
So whether you make it to church once or twice a year, or every week, I hope your Christmas worship, and your entire Christmas celebration, whatever form it takes, is joyful.
Image: our parish’s manger.
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