The Twelve Days of Christmas, Bavarian-style (8) 

On the seventh day of Christmas my Bavarian friend gave to me: seven steps to heaven.

There are only a few times a year that one can find the churches full, and Christmas is one of them. Unlike Easter, where a warm sunny day may tempt some to forgo church, Christmas usually needn’t compete with the weather. Catholic liturgy has changed little since Peter built the church in Rome, except it can now be found in the vulgar language of the people.

If you’d still like to hear it in its original Latin, Pope Francis will give his first Christmas Mass at the Vatican, and owing to the near ‘rock star’ popularity of his first nine months, it should be extremely well-attended.

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