YouTube, Christmas Spirit

Well, they did a great job! The YouTube five-minute version of my interview is up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHkIyRz_pIY

I’m trying to get as wide a distribution of the video as I can, so if any of you want to send it to friends, please do so. I know it’s not splashy or funny or spectacular, but it is well done and I do make a point about the traditional mystery being a “comfort read” sorely needed in today’s scary world.

Besides, that lavender straw hat is something special.

Monday I took a friend to lunch then we went to a store with the curious name Missal Leaflet. It is a Roman Catholic supply store that caters to both clergy and lay people. It’s in a nondescript building in a middle-class neighborhood not far from downtown Saint Paul. No big display windows, and a modest glass door in the side of the building marks the entrance. A life-size statue of St. Francis releasing a bow of doves from his upstretched hands greets you inside the door. That and the scent of incense. Ann and I go there once a year to buy a new Fontanini piece for the really big collection I donated to my church a few years ago. (When we moved from our townhouse to our apartment, there was no longer room to display it.) Bless St. George's kind hearts, they put me in charge of setting up the display every year, so I still get to play with it. The collection is so huge it takes two eight-foot tables to display it. It’s not just the Stable with Mary, Joseph and the Babe, and the shepherds with their sheep (and a multitude of angels descending over them), it’s Bethlehem: the green grocer, the rug seller, the baker, the carpenter shop, the street musicians, etc., etc. With shrubs and palm trees. And Leaflet Missal is the only store in the area that carries so many Fontanini pieces I can generally find one not already in the collection. And that I want. I don’t have Santa Claus kneeling at the Manger, for example. Or the Little Drummer Boy. This year I bought the blacksmith at his anvil and the smithy. And a new camel for the Three Kings’ train – one of the old ones developed a weakness in an ankle and could no longer stand.

This past Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King, the last Sunday of Pentecost – the end of the church year. That makes this coming Sunday the First Sunday of Advent, and the display should be ready by then. It will stay up till January 6.

I thought I wasn’t going to get in the Christmas spirit very easily this year, but walking into Leaflet Missal did it for me. How do you inspire the spirit within you?