From “The Private Diary of Bishop F. Atticus McButterpants” – 25-12-21 – Christmas stuff

December 21st 2025

Dear Diary,

First entry in a few coz busy.  It’s been really cold. Someone said its the winter solstiss again and said the days are getting longer now, which does not seem right because it is getting darker earlier. Not sure how this works.  Anyway the cold is real enough.

Christmas is coming fast. I’m worn out, as usual.  I love the season and decorations and music but the calendar jammed.  It think it fills itself.  To stay in the mood I’ve been wearing my xmas socks and santa hat for Mass.  Everyone likes them.  Parties, dinners, stopping in for a few minutes which is never just a few.  I try to keep up but some days feel longer than they should.  That solstiss maybe?

Headache: Fr. Luis was picked up at CTK* by ICE and is being detained before deportation. More to do. The diocesan lawyer is working on it and says it depends on paperwork and timing. It always does. The parish keeps calling. I tell them we are doing what we can.  The newsies are calling off the hook looking for my reaction or a statement or something.   Luis.  You’ve gotta try to help him, right?  But do you think that after a few years here he’d be able to preach in English?

There are Christmas cookies everywhere more than seems reasonable even for me. Plates and tins and boxes. Chester ate a whole plate of cookies that was left on a chair, including the paper plate and threw up in Fr. Gilbert’s office. He was calm about it but not happy. The carpet will never be the same. Chester was fine afterward.  He doesn’t seem to mind the cold on walks which is pretty weird.  Then again, nothing about him is normal.  I remember when we got him those reindeer horns.

Fr Msgr Tommy said McSwiney at the Cathedral had an idea in a deanery meeting to shorten the midnight Mass by excluding the Creed if children looked restless. No wonder they call him the “Irish Setter”.  I asked what counted as restless. T said McS said you can tell by the noise. I said noise has never stopped a Mass before.  Should I get involved?  After all, I’m supposed to say that one.  Do I get a vote?

People are calling the chancery because Strove* put up a lighted inflatable creche “for evangelization” in front of his campus chapel. It is large and very bright and runs all the time. The real problem is that he has a speaker there where he plays his daily homilies on a loop.  Its making everyone crazy.   Maybe he should play mine!  HEE!

Tomorrow is the annual party planned with priests and chancery people at Razzo’s.  They’ll make that angel hair pasta that’s soooo good and that chocolate dessert.  It’s busy but there are perks.

*The parish of Christ The King where Fr. Ernesto is pastor.  Fr. Luis was sent there to work on his English because it was once the least Hispanic parish in the diocese.

**Fr. Dave “Strove” Harris is a less than bright bulb in the diocesan chandelier assigned now to campus ministry. He preaches like a cross between a runaway train and a clown car. Once in a homily at the Engendering Togetherness Community of Welcome at Spud Corners he talked about “Strove Tuesday” and said it was because in the past in Lent ancient Christians “strove to be better”.  That made him famous in the presbyterate, prompting +F. Atticus to say that “even Chester knows its SHROVE” and mumbled something about spending a quarter of a million on his formation.