Procter no,

Berto Greetings Parish Orphans in RetroGers

and RetroGrages. We are in the third week Greetings, parish orphans, and retrogrades.

We are in the third week of Advent, the Gaudete week, the pink candle week, the celebratory one around my house.

We've undertaken a new pre-Christmas tradition where we open the first gift, each member of the family,

of the Christmas on Gaudete. And then we're going to do the second gift on the fourth Advent Sunday.

And this year, then we're going to do a Christmas Eve gift and a Christmas Eve gift or two,

which we always do.

And Christmas, and we're going to go a couple days after Christmas and save one or two gifts for the 26th and 27.

Just something new we're trying.

But, and with full awareness of the cognitive dissonance, irony, the paradox entailed by this.

Here in Gaudete Week, the non-penetential week of the four-week pre-Christmas season,

the happy week.

I wanted to do a show on Advent and even Christmas time suffering.

Many, many folks suffered a lot in 2024. It was a tough year. And I'm not just talking about the Biden economy, though it lower levels of intensity, it includes that.

We're all suffering with paying like $7 for a gallon of milk at the grocery store.

In my own life, in the lives of some of my dearest friends, late 2023 and 2024 was just a tough year. I had some minor bodily sufferings that were kind of

chronic going on from Easter on. That's nothing, though, compared to some of my friends.

In late 2023, just having though, compared to some of my friends in late

2023, just having passed the anniversary, one of my dear, dear friends lost both twins

in utero, had a wife pregnant with twins and lost them both. That anniversary just passed

two and a half days ago. And another one of my dear

...