American Christmas

The Christmas season is hands down my favorite month of the year. I mean, come on: the music, the tree, the decorations, the planning and the secrets, the cookies, (hopefully) the snow, and the final culmination, complete with family, friends, and even more delicious goodies. There’s just no end to the wonderfulness! Thus, I was determined to make this Christmas season – my first away from home – as festive as possible.

The day after Thanksgiving, I spent hours listening to Christmas music and cutting out paper snowflakes, to Christmas-ize my home. Strangely, that was all I did for a couple weeks, but it was enough to put me in the mood. Then my site mate and I began to prepare for our upcoming celebration with the 2 PCVs the next town over. We spent three whole afternoons making decorations, including fancy Christmas cards, more snowflakes, a TP-roll snowman, and TP-roll “Christmas lights.”

The snowflakes, TP-roll "lights", and even the TP-roll snowman!

The highlight of my preparations though was the stockings. I wanted to make stockings for the four of us, so I drew out a template and went to one of the tailors in town to see about buying fabric. He had some great shiny and stretchy burgundy fabric, so I was happy. But when I pulled out the template, he thought I was asking him to make them, so he took it, and that’s when the magic happened: he made me four wonderful stockings, in under 45 minutes. I kid you not, it was the fastest I’ve ever seen someone cut, sew, and iron fabric. And if that wasn’t enough, he wanted to know why I wanted such enormous socks made, so I happily explained to him in the local language about stockings. I told him that for American Christmas, when the children are sleeping, the parents put candy in these very big socks, and that when the children wake up and see the candy, they are very excited. Not a perfect explanation, but I was proud of myself for how close I got in Oromiffa. And the stockings were beautiful to boot!

The stockings!

 Our celebration took place two weekends early, and included many games, much laughter, small gift exchanges, and an out-of-this –world delicious meal. In other words, exactly what Christmas should be. It was enough for me, to satisfy my mission to be festive despite 7,500 miles from home, but it wasn’t the end.

On Christmas Eve, my sister’s care package arrived! She had deliberately set out to send me Rosen Christmas in a box, and boy did she succeed:

Yep, she sent me a lighted and decorated tree, a Christmas mug and hot chocolate, a stocking with my favorite Christmas chocolate, Christmas socks, Christmas pj pants, a real, physical book, snow, and a cat - everything I love about Christmas at home that would fit in a box! 

Since I now had a Christmas tree, mini candy canes, and a real Christmas stocking, I decided to make use of them in a Christmas lesson at my English club that afternoon. I had a blast with the kids, explaining to them the Christmas tree, the stockings, and the candy, and being able to show them real examples of all of it! We started out by comparing Ethiopian Christmas and American Christmas, and we determined that both involve special food, family and friends coming together, and church-going. We finished by opening the present I had wrapped for them and opening the stocking, both of which contained candy for them. Seeing their eyes light up at the sight of the candy, and watching their reactions to the taste of the candy canes was priceless, and will be a lifelong memory.

My kids, with the tree, stocking, and present. :)

 As my sister wrote to me, “We have so many years to celebrate Christmas together…you only get two in Ethiopia, so make them count!” She’s exactly right. So, how do you think I did?