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| cute dog |
Yes, Advent calendars for dogs, presumably because people are not having children. My cats could not understand God, or Advent or fasting and all four of them, even Vladimir, were more intelligent than any dog, especially Gillie, Puddy, and Miho. What is the point?
It is very strange being in a large urban area in the centre of Dublin when the streets are full of Christmas decorations and the stores are advertising the usual for presents. It is odd that all the people on the street in Grafton Street, or St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre are part of this culture where less than 25% of those 89% who call themselves Catholic go to Sunday Mass. Most of the people I see daily are not Irish, by the way. I do not have statistics on minorities in Ireland as to religious observance. The vast majority of the youth I see are from Poland, China, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, and other places.
To me, Christmas, as described by Dickens, is in the heart, not in the presents. For those who are not Catholic, nor Christian, Christmas is a time for gathering, having dinner, celebrating something, maybe or maybe nothing. I find it perplexing and disturbing that an entire 75% or more of the Catholic population are living a life separated from God and that the others who are not Catholic or Christian shop anyway. It strikes me as odd that the decorations and sales are there merely for mammon and not for the Babe in the Manger. I have not seen one religious decoration, although I saw an Advent Calendar for sale in a shop with a Hello Kitty theme and chocolate for everyday, which is in opposition to what we had, which were little doors with Scriptural references. No chocolate in Advent in my house.
This coming Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent. I intend to do the Byzantine Fast, which is not hard to do in my situation, but demands attention. That is, no meat on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and no dairy on Tuesday and Thursday. Saturday and Sunday would not be fast days. Part of my fast will be for the thousands I see daily on Johnson Court or Clarendon Street or Duke Street, which remind me so much of the lines of T. S. Eliot: the words applying to London can apply to Dublin.
| Unreal City, | 60 |
| Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, | |
| A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, | |
| I had not thought death had undone so many. | |
| Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, | |
| And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. | 65 |
| Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, | |
| To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours | |
| With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. | |
| There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson! | |
| You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! | 70 |
| That corpse you planted last year in your garden, | |
| Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? | |
| Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? | |
| Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, | |
| Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! | 75 |
| You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!” |