Christmas....

In the past ten years we've had Christmas in New Zealand once!  It was all done for us as we were visiting from Thailand... apart from that we've been having our celebrations in a Buddhists country.  As you can imagine, not much fuss at all...  here in New Zealand every shop has decorations, Christmas music everywhere, stressed people emanating tension where ever you go!  In Thailand it was only ever one or two aisles in the supermarket that sold tinsel, fairy lights and Christmas trees and a little music here and there.  In Thailand, international schools close for two weeks, Thai schools don't even have Christmas day closed... here in New Zealand it's the Summer holidays so schools are closed for six or seven weeks AND New Zealand kind of closes for one or two!  REALLY, TRULY closes... ah well... just another cultural thing to put on the list of shocking!
 
So... how do we go about Christmas after all this time?  I really don't know.  We've managed to buy a gingerbread house that only needs assembling and decorating, so that's number two activity on Christmas Day, there's even a competition attached to it, that WE ARE GOING TO WIN!!!  Number one activity is to open our presents which are happily sitting under our little second hand Christmas tree, don't feel too sorry for us, it's not a dead tree from someone's 2010 Christmas, it IS a fake one!  Then we get to watch DVDs that are wrapped and under said tree, then off to family for an evening bbq dinner.

Next year hopefully we will have truly figured out more of what Christmas really means and have new traditions developing.... I'm thinking GIVING rather than RECEIVING.... loving and laughing and spending time with people who have no-one to spend their time with, we'll see....

Merry Christmas everyone!