Back from Up North, with Christmas loot. Of special interest to you, dear reader: an Illuminati expansion, the card game Lunch Money, a car emergency kit, and Scarface: The World Is Yours, perhaps the last good Xbox game.

After the annual Christmas Hoe-down with my dad's side of the family on Saturday, my brothers and I spent several hours Sunday playing Halo 2.

Of course, those two turned out to be a rocket lamo and sniping lamo respectively (and for the sake of transparency, I should mention that Our Bold Hero has an unusual and perhaps annoying fondness for the game's vehicles), but the important thing is that none of us was so good at Halo 2 as to make the experience unenjoyable for the other two.

On Sunday night, this atheist had to decide whether or not to attend Christmas Eve Mass.

I see that Graham had much the same dilemma, which he handled with his usual Unitarian tolerance, but I chose a more conciliatory/cowardly approach and went to church, figuring that I could still respect my parents' wishes without going against my atheistic convictions or sacrileging all over the church's nice new carpet.

I've used my computer's finest graphic arts program to create a diagram of my one-and-a-half-hour adventure in awkwardness:



This particular priest had played a large role in my pre-apostate religious life, and he gave me a look when he noticed that I wasn't praying out loud. Also, I found sitting six feet away from him while he gave the (lousy) homily a bit awkward.

My big dilemma was Holy Communion, which I thought it would be both wrong and disrespectful to take. Do they always say the word "Eucharist" so many times during Christmas Eve mass? Because while I was trying to think of the most graceful way to get out of taking communion, I must have heard it at least a dozen times.

Anyways, not to be anticlimactic, but since in that narrow front pew you can't stay seated without causing a major traffic jam, I did what I saw quite a few people do back when I was a Eucharistic Minister (hah! there it is!) and covered my mouth with one hand.

(Catholics are supposed to do something like this too, if they have mortal sin on them, so I think there's actually a special gesture. I'll have to ask a priest, next time I have no choice but to go to church.)

After my internal religious drama, Christmas itself was good, pretty low-key and lazy. We watched some movies and I played a bit of Scarface when everyone who could be offended was in bed.

(I also discovered, and pointed out to my equally-surprised mom, that the delicious "Holiday Nog" we've been drinking for years isn't really egg nog, but rather egg nog flavored milk. I love the stuff, so this goes a long way towards explaining why real egg nog has always disappointed me.)

I drove back late this morning, and I'm not sure when I'll get back up north.

As planned, I'd wrapped and planted a case of one of Jenna's favorite beers in the fridge before I left for B-town on Friday night. I discovered her present to me, my very last Christmas present, in the liquor cabinet when we got back today.

The Christmas season will end when I have my last cup of Bailey's and hot chocolate, or on Three Kings Day, whenever comes first.