I am by no means a religious person, but I went to Christmas Mass this year. I went to a Methodist service, despite my roots being in Catholicism. Church has definitely changed since my glory days of actually attending on a regular basis, and I now have insights in to what you should expect if you are attending a Christmas, or really, any Mass.
1. The Video Packages Are Off The Chain
So I went to some fancy new-age church that had projection capabilities, and I would highly recommend this as it added a lot to the entire experience. They started with this slide show where they said all the cool stuff that Jesus did like giving us salvation and shit. Then they showed a slide that stated, "Jesus destroyed his enemies," and I'm like, "God damn, that is awesome." Then I realized I was in church, so I changed my thoughts to, "Fuck yeah, Jesus is a motherfucker you don't want to cross."
2. The Black Guy Will Sing Like An Angel
As a white person who was in small towns in the Midwest, I knew there would not be a lot of diversity at church. So, yeah, there were a whole lot of white people up in there. But you best believe that one black guy would step up in front of the entire church and deliver a solo that brought the house down. Good for that guy, not only for the impressive pipes, but to deal with a bunch of white people. White people are the worst (hence, they falsely claim a Middle Eastern Jesus as one of their own).
3. Watch Out For That Youth Pastor
Growing up in the Catholic Church, there were no such things as youth pastors. Basically, because you couldn't do chicks and had to live a life of celibacy (it's odd that so many people who pledge their celibacy end up being creeps who sexually assault children). But at these churches that don't require a creepy life of celibacy,
there are youth pastors. These are not what you expect, as they look more alternative than traditional pastors. The one at this church even had gauges in his ears. It's basically a young adult emo who is preaching the word of the Lord, which makes sense, because, let's face it, Jesus was the original emo.
4. People Get Very Excited About Candles
You get a candle for when Silent Night is played near the end, and people are very excited by this. In fact, the church ran out of candles, so the preacher man made an announcement saying that more candles were on their way. People applauded. No man, woman, or child should be left without a candle. When they were finally lit, there were lit candles around, so I was a little underwhelmed, but fire is cool, I guess.
5. There Will Be Hilarious Hypotheticals
So his big sermon asked, "Would you have seen? Would you have heard?" in regards to Baby Jesus. This is fairly insane, because, only like three weird dudes came, and they gave a baby gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Dudes, it's a baby, a rattle would have sufficed. Also, this reminds me of what awful writers the Bible had, because Jesus definitely should have used these gifts later on to vanquish some enemies; that would have made for a much more compelling story.
Anyway, I got a little sidetracked there, because the pastor apparently wants to be the type of person that travels for miles to give babies weird gifts. Even weirder than that, he also asked whether he would have ears, and it's like, dude, 2000 years ago isn't so long ago that humans didn't have ears. Also, you're religious, so you're not supposed to believe in evolution anyway. Get it together, brah.
Ultimately, Christmas Mass is the best time to go to church during the year. All the cool kids are there, and they don't have time to spew any of their bullshit hate speech. So overall, it's just a really positive place where they focus on treating people with kindness. If they did that more often, I might even go twice a year.
