Full of the blessings of Our Lord's Birth and the peace and joy He imparts. I have no energy to prose on here (although apart from that I am feeling halfway decent) and so won't.
My annual read of Mr Dicken's The Pickwick Papers begun, I found myself on a detour in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica reading about sticklebacks, the subjects of Mr Pickwicks 'Tittlebatian theory'.
... But with the return of the warmer season each male selects a territory, which he fiercely defends against all comers, especially against intruders of his own species and sex, and to which he invites all females, until the nest is filled with ova. At this period he also assumes a bridal dress, painted with blue and red tints. The eggs are of comparatively large size, one female depositing from 50 to 100....
That's some colorful prose that won't be found in current scholarly nonsense. 'He assumes a bridal dress, painted with blue and red tints'. Is that the author's creative impulse at work, or perhaps an acknowledgement of very late Victorian propriety-- mating even among two and three inch fishes too much for the delicate readers of the Encyclopedia to read about.
Eh. Holy Mass preceded by Christmas Matins and a service of carols from Christmas Eve, the Mass in the night.
Mass in the day; the Masses at dawn were celebrated as low Masses and not livestreamed.
And then Second Vespers of Christmas.
The antiphon at the Magnificat of Vespers:
Hódie Christus natus est: hódie Salvátor appáruit: hódie in terra canunt Angeli, lætántur Archángeli: hódie exsúltant justi, dicéntes: Glória in excélsis Deo, allelúja.
LDVM
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