Christmas Eve

The ice on the trees has not melted, so it looks like we should have a white-ish Christmas after all.

We went to the English Mass at church in the evening and then allowed the kids to open up their secret Santa gifts. They had all picked a sibling's name out of a hat last week and along with giving a gift, they had to perform two anonymous good deeds for that person. No one was able to correctly guess who their secret Santa was. In fact, no one could tell that anyone had done anything nice for them at all over the past week. I have the sneaking suspicion that the acts of kindness fell by the wayside. Rather disappointing during this season of goodwill.

After the kids went to bed, I put on the TV to see what was on and was just in time to see Clark W. Griswold grease up his silver saucer for sledding in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Seeing him yell "Eichhörnchen!" didn't have quite the same effect as "Squirrel!" It did occur to me that this movie might give Germans a slightly skewed view of American life.