First off, WHY? Want to get in your Thanksgiving caroling? what's wrong with enjoying it all together? ... but that is not my point. To each their own.
This month, similarly to before we moved, I find myself looking into a giant void with a new question: What will our Christmas be like?
Forget Thanksgiving. We both teach on Thursdays. Maybe we'll eat out. Ha! Chinese food for Thanksgiving!
I'm stumped for a Christmas letter. I listen to Christmas music in the hopes of inspiration, and feel tears in my eyes if I start to sing along. Will I have the opportunity to sing Christmas hymns this year? Will we find a Christmas Eve church service? I might have a Christmas program at one of my schools that day... would I even be free to go to church?
Brett and I are not deeply traditional. Christmas meal is whatever. We never put up a tree, but I did have three nativity sets, one or two of which always made it up. I also always send Christmas cards, and use the ones sent to me to frame a doorway. I love that. I think I have a way to get out a Christmas letter, if I manage to write one, but doubt any cards will find their way to us. (I'd probably cry over every one that arrived, anyway.)
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| My smallest nativity |
I think I have to stop writing. This post is depressing me.
I am blessed to be married to wonderful, Christian man who makes life enjoyable and adventurous, and we have grand opportunities before us. Christmas is about Christ's birth, and we can commemorate that anywhere.
Yes, Christmas is what you make of it!! Celebrate anyway! Make yourself a little nativity set! You could use little sticks and tiny bits of cloth. It would be fun. My sister has always gone out to eat Chinese food for Thanksgiving. (Not the kind that you'll be eating, which I'm sure is better) Happy November!!
ReplyDeleteI have since found out that one private school, run by a Jamaican, will be having a traditional Thanksgiving meal, so there's that.
DeleteI like the idea of making a nativity... I'll have to work out "with what" since anything non-vital is back in the States. Good idea!
Could you ask your friends/loved ones to send digital Christmas cards? As in, an email with the family photo? Then you could make your own photo collage if you have access to a printer, or make a digital one for your computer background or something.
ReplyDeleteI ate McDonalds on Christmas when I was in Moscow. They don't celebrate Christmas there so it was just a day like any other for them. I drowned my woes in French fries, old school McD's apple pies, and vodka while watching pirated holiday movies. You do what you can to make it feel like home - and you have your spouse with you, so that's definitely going to help! :)
The international school may actually have a traditional dinner like they did for Thanksgiving. I'm helping with their Christmas program, so it'll be pretty Christmassy around here after all!
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