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Hello friends and family! I hope you have all had a lovely Christmas, and I want to thank all of you for your cards and packages in the mail that have made my Christmas feel about as close to home as possible.
Christmas here is pretty fun - there are a lot of interesting traditions. First, there are crackers. Crackers are these little things that look like wrapped tubes of something, and people pull on either side, and like a wishbone one person wins the little tug of war and the small gift inside the cracker. In L'Arche, they have an international Christmas Eve dinner, where all of the assistants bring a traditional dish from there home country, and everyone sings their national anthem. This year there was also this guy that plays the pipes - Irish pipes are somewhat like bagpipes, except you don't blow into them, you just pump them with your arm. Everyone also took turns singing for each other - Paddy and I sang our rendition of Jingle Bells, which was, of course, fabulous. I made chicken pot pie totally from scratch - homemade noodles and everything, so now I know how to make it if anyone ever wants me to at home :-). We went to "midnight" mass on Christmas Eve - which in Callan starts at 10PM, so everyone can get out of mass and get to the pubs before they close (not even kidding right now.) However, we did not go to the pubs, we just came home. Christmas morning we went to mass again, and they had a gospel choir doing the liturgy, which was really fun. Also, the priest mentioned Santa Claus a few times in his homily, and this little kid stands up when the priest was just about to end, and he goes "Excuse me! You forgot about Rudolph!" And he proceeded to sing Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. It was adorable. We finally got around to opening our presents at about 2PM... and, while it's not quite the same as seeing little kids' joy at the perfect present, seeing Paddy's face when he opens a package that contains a Guinness is pretty gosh-darned heartwarming. In Ireland typical gifts are wine and chocolate, so we had plenty of that yesterday (and will have plenty of those two things for a few weeks.) For Christmas dinner, the Irish always have ham AND turkey - doesn't matter how few people are eating, both meats are a must. They also have brussel sprouts, carrots, potatoes, and Christmas pudding, which you have to light on fire. I really want to know who had the bright idea that everyone should drink lots of wine with Christmas dinner, and then have to set dessert on fire... not quite the safest thing in the world. It was a nice, relaxing day.
Oh! Jannis has been absolutely fascinated by toe socks - because Jen and I both own them and wear them around the house. So for Christmas she bought him a pair, and we definitely took pictures of the three of us all wearing our toe socks.
This past Saturday we had a Christmas party here, which was also super fun - we had cheese fondue for dinner, then read Christmas stories, then decorated sugar cookie Christmas trees. They don't have cookies here like we have in America, so the Americans of An Siol took the liberty of baking everyone some Christmas cookies - we were up until 11:30 last Thursday doing so, but it was tons of fun.
Tomorrow we head to Cork for holidays - it's just for a few days, and will be a nice change of scenery. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a great start to 2008!
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Posted by luvstigger223 on 2007-12-26 09:36:41 | Rating: | Views: 74
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Holy! You really are getting a lot of activities packed into your holidays! It sounds like you're having a great time, and those traditions sound really fun! Have a good New Year!
Thanks for sharing!
-Ally
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Posted by lovenotes77
on 2007-12-26 11:10:12
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This post makes me hungry! Happy New Year! We missed you terribly last week, you were talked about often. Kathy and Gene just bubbled about you and how they love hearing from you via email!
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Posted by Beklh170
on 2008-01-02 12:05:56
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