Monday, December 21, 2009

How the Grinch Stole Novenas

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The last week of school we started out each day by going to a novena. I guess this is a catholic thing, or at least it is here in Colombia. They are short services with prayer, songs, and scripture to prepare for the coming of the Christ child. There is one each of the nine days leading up to Christmas. (Nine days… novena… ah-ha) The school has a mass, or misa, about once a month or so. It never ceases to amaze me how well behaved the students are at mass. It is such a drastic difference to how they normally are.

Each day of the novenas a different group of students performed songs and acted out a part of the Christmas story. Since the school is bilingual, we sang Christmas songs both in English and Spanish. I loved getting to learn some new Christmas songs. Feliz Navidad was sung several times during the week, and why not? It is in English and Spanish!

But one day, instead of having a novena, the Grinch came. The senior class has chosen Dr. Seuss as their theme for the year. So, they all have these white pants/suspender outfits that they periodically wear. At the very beginning of the year they performed a Cat and the Hat vs. the Grinch dance-off. I was both amazed and confused by that whole thing. Anyways, one morning, the seniors put on a reader’s theater of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. True to form it had an elaborate backdrop, set and costumes. You could say the Grinch stole the whole novena.

2 comments:

  1. True to form, I had no idea that these Novenas existed. I knew about the Grinch one, but I missed it because I had a test that day and nobody had told me about the Grinch stealing my test, but the other days? This is the first I've heard about it. Were my students there? I'm so confused.

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  2. haha- it was just elementary students... I guess i thought you guys had novenas at a different time, like we do for mass. Guess not! ???

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