Christmas Eve

One last "World's Largest" as I approach Houston. The World's Largest Teapot is in Navasota, Texas (not in Chester, West Virginia). It is located at Martha's Bloomers Home & Garden Store.



I had the perfect Christmas beer for Christmas Eve: Santa's Butt, an English brew. It’s a splendid, satisfying Winter Porter. Everyone wants a piece of Santa’s Butt.

This special porter was inspired by this famous line from a well-loved children’s story book: "And Santa sat on his great butt, drinking a hearty brew."

In case you find that amusing, I hasten to point out that in England ‘butt’ refers to a certain barrel used in brewing -- a very large barrel, in fact, holding 108 imperial gallons. Back in the day it was quite a normal thing for a brewery to put its beer up in a large butt for storage.

Still snickering, eh? Get your mind out of the gutter or Santa will skip your house entirely this year.

Got into Houston in time for a Christmas Eve service, at Rev. Joel and Victoria Osteen's Lakewood Church. Fittingly, it is the World's Largest Church, with 16,000 seats and more than 38,000 worshipers weekly. I guess no fear of the ministers having too many "close personal relationships" here...