Despite what many might think, Christmas Day did not find myself and my Brothers sitting around a manger scene set up in our Scriptorium. True, we spent what can be called an ordinary day and also had our usual meal of lima beans and rice, but there was a festive feeling to the day nonetheless.
However, can you imagine how tired we're getting of beans and rice? In my opinion, Lima beans are the most odious of legumes. And that's without consideration of their effects. Eleven full grown men on a diet of those green devils produces a pall of bad air from one end of the Chapter House to the other. Coming into The Pit the morning after the previous day's vapors have aged overnight can be an unsettling experience. I can't imagine the reaction of a visitor getting a nose full. They’d think they were visiting a crypt!
Still, food is food and none of us ever feel starved. There's too much gas to feel empty. And so on Christmas we were festive ... for a bunch of monks ... while we ate our dinner and afterward sang hymns and the old Bing Crosby Christmas tunes. But the highlight of the evening, as it is every year, was Harpo's rendition of Blue Christmas sung in the great style of Porky Pig, including the lisp, the stutter and the ribald asides. Harpo does a great rendition of what Father Guido Sarducci called "the worst Christmas song ever." Maybe that's why we love it.
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