Catholic Cathedrals and Christmas Eve

Well Christmas has definitely been real different, but definitely also really great! Me and my mom cooked a scrumptious Christmas dinner on the eve. I mean this food was Amazing!! Shrimp, special German noodles, salad, roasted eggplant, Champaign etc! After the deliciousness, we called my dad and talked to him for a bit, its me and my mom’s first Christmas apart from the papa bear ☺

So, because I live 10 minutes away from Europe’s biggest Gothic Cathedral, we decided we would attend the Midnight Mass. After reading up about it and talking to Tourist Information, we found out doors opened at 11pm, but its good to get there at 10ish in order to get seats.

At promptly 11, the doors opened and we were part of a mosh-pit-ish crowd, funneling into the majestic doors of the Dom Cathedral. We got our seats surrounded by thousands of other people attending this service. This was the first full scale Catholic mass I’ve ever attended, and I found it really interesting.

The organ music was great! The 120 person choir sounded like an assembly of angels, singing and praying was all good but……..the one thing we decided we could real easily do without is the incense!

Its hard to actually explain the enormacity that is this church. Its just sooooo tall and wide. We estimated 12 of our churches could fit inside this one……and the amount of incense that was goin on in this building still had everyone chocking!!

When I got home I researched they use/symbolism of the incense in the Catholic church and found that it symbolizes prayers going up to heaven, and it symbolically cleanses the people in the church. Interesting and powerful when you see floating up, but maybe the guy at the front could just give the burning smelly stuff one good shake and then stop?...instead of whirling his arm off?

The Mass ended around 1:45am and we were into bed by 2…..probably the latest I’ve ever stayed up on Christmas eve. But as I mentioned in a previous blog, Santa doesn’t do his round in Germany on the 24th, so I didn’t have to worry about going to sleep early so he could come.
So there ya have it. Christmas 2008, in a different country, in a different language, in a different Church, but still with part of my family! This weekend we’re also going to see my relatives for a couple nights, so we’ll get a couple bigger family gatherings in yet too.

Fröliche Weihnachten and Merry Christmas!!