Sunday, December 20, 2009

Embracing it all


Christmas. I wonder how many blogs have been written about this. Well, I have been doing a lot of thinking about Christmas.
To me it is cold noses and hot chocolate. Baking and more baking. Tobogganing and classic Christmas movies. Gathering with Friends. Being with family or wishing you could be with family. Remembering old memories and making new ones. Turkey and being stuffed with stuffing. Avoiding the malls yet buying wonderful gifts. The smell of a real Christmas trees. Driving around looking at Christmas lights.......
So, now I move across the world.
And Christmas comes.
And I realize how much emotion is attached with the season.
How much my senses have to do with me 'feeling' like it is Christmas.
There is no snow falling outside.
No oven to bake peppernuts in.
Not many Christmas parties to got to.
No turkey to roast.

We have set up a tree (fake, but I am determined to buy a real one next year!). We are drinking hot Chocolate with candy canes, and watching most of our favorite holiday classics on youtube or youku (the Chinese youtube). The kids are having a blast secretly buying gifts for each other. And because our little island is so safe, they can even go and buy them all on their own. We are going to a candle light service on Christmas eve with friends. Christmas music is the always playing.

I have gone back and forth between loving this new experience in this season, and wishing with all my heart that I was in Canada with friends and family right now. That I was were all is familiar.

Then the other day I remember how I had longed and longed to be here. This is all a part of that. New experiences. Enjoying traditions and creating new ones.
Embracing that and not being frustrated with it.

Not just trying to recreate old ones.

The kids love for me to tell them my memories of growing up and how we celebrated Christmas. Tonight I laughed with them when I told them how one day they will snuggle with their kidlets all cozy in their beds and say

"I remember that one year when we lived on a small island in Hong Kong and we................" That made me smile!


Merry Christmas everyone!!

2 comments:

  1. Thinking of all of you there this week, Cris. I allowed myself a bit of time yesterday to go back in time and remember Christmases past with Gramps and your Mom and my Dad, and all of us would cram into the house on the 26th . . . and the kids always had to wait to eat! And then you would get plunked beside me in the high chair and I'd have to supervise your jello consumption. That's what I got for being the oldest - at least until Julie came along a few years later.

    I also got to thinking about the summers you spent with us in Regina, good babysitter that you were. Our kids still talk about that! Great memories of family times.

    Merry Christmas and have a wonderful week, Cris and Brad and Feshya and Sam and Ethan. We love you lots!

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  2. Love your new web site by the way. It looks lovely.

    I was thinking about some of the things you were saying and realized how often we do that as people - look forward to the future, look to something else happening, and then when we're at that situation, we wish we were somewhere else. My significant other and myself were talking about that last night and how we needed to learn to "live in the moment, and enjoy the right now" and for he and I that is something we need to do.....not worry about retirement or about the future, but to trust him who looks after us, and know that he always will, enjoying where we are at the moment.

    Having said that windy speech, it is hard to be somewhere else at Christmas. One year we were in Australia at Christmas and to this day I feel like it was Christmas in July, felt like I missed it. Blessings to you and your family. You're embracing the season and doing all the right things, and making memories with your family. Enjoy!!!

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