A Christmas Unlike Any Others

This has been a very interesting holiday for me. It is the first time I have ever been away from my family for Christmas and also my first time experiencing the traditions of another's. I thought I would share with you my typical holiday traditions, compared to those of the family I am currently staying with.

My particular family traditions usually involve a bigger Christmas Eve. We serve appetizers of all sorts and a plethora of cookies (home-baked with love by my mother) and enjoy a bit of a buffet style dinner while watching 'A Christmas Story' and the original Grinch animated short. Usually my parents will watch 'A Christmas Carol' together, and I will watch 'It's a Wonderful Life.' Sometimes we watch the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with that elf that wants to be a dentist too. When we were younger, we would get to open one present on Christmas Eve. Christmas morning, I would usually be the first to wake, sneaking through the hallway to snitch my stocking from under the tree then tip-toeing back to my room to sit, excitedly yet methodically, taking each item out of my stocking then placing it carefully back in. I would put my stocking back in place under the tree before waiting until a time when I felt it was appropriate to jump on the beds and knock on the doors of my parents and sister's rooms. We would open our stockings first then the presents, have a breakfast consisting sometimes of chocolate, then spend the rest of the day being lazy and watching movies we'd received as presents.

 

Here, I will be experiencing a very different kind of Christmas. I suppose it is not so different on the surface but there will be many traditions that I shall miss but also some that I may begin incorporating into my own Christmas. Christmas Eve we will, in the tradition of 'A Christmas Carol', watch a ghost story or similarly scary movie. On Christmas Day, their family attends church to sing carols at the top of their lungs, then returns home to make turkey 'dinner', which is actually served around 2 pm. This year, I, along with the two boys my age in the family, will be cooking dinner for the family. It will be, for the most part, a typical British Christmas dinner with proper Christmas pudding and the lot.

I am very much looking forward to cooking a traditional dinner and have to say that I may begin asking for honey roasted parsnips and fire roasted chestnuts at following Christmases, but I will very much miss my family traditions of excessive Christmas movie watching and appetizer and cookie-devouring. I will miss the thrill of sneaking out to peak in my stocking and looking through the old letters from Santa Clause, that were written in the style of the letters J.R.R Tolkien wrote to his grandchildren (see below.)

I am thankful to be spending the holidays in such good company and wish everyone I know back in Canada-land, as well as those I have grown to know here in the U.K, a very happy Christmas. 

Here are a few images of the decorations from around the house as well.