Merry Christmas to all....
I hope you have a great holiday this year! Mine so far has been lovely, and activity-filled.
In honor of the holiday, I wanted to share my top 5 Christmas memories.
Christmas Eve My parents always have a huge party on Christmas Eve, complete with food, music, etc. They invite friends of the family and people who have no family around so they have something to do on Christmas Eve. It usually starts right after church and goes until midnight or later! Us kids started inviting friends out too. I remember one when I was in high school when there must have been 30 people in our house! Some traditions were created as certain guests brought the same things every year. Later I found out that one of the reasons they started doing it was to keep the kids occupied so they wouldn't be begging to open gifts all night.
Christmas Tree I've had a lot of different types of Christmas trees, including my tiny one here that was mailed to me. Tammy and I used to drive out into the bush and load some trees into the back of her truck. One I remember clearly was the year we were going to be having Christmas at my grandparents' home, so there was no need for us to buy a tree (and we wouldn't be there to maintain it), so my mom cut a tree out of paper and taped it to the wall. We drew on the decorations, and put our presents beside it until it was time to load everything in the car to go to Camrose.
First Christmas in Taiwan If you want to read the original posts, you can look here. It was my first Christmas away from home, and I was a little homesick, but had fun spending it was Hope and Amy. We had gifts from Taipei, church parties and performances, and an inordinate amount of stress over saying "Christmas is our favorite holiday" in Chinese. It was interesting to see how Taiwan does and doesn't celebrate Christmas.
Coming home for Christmas One of my years of college, it must have been my first year, I was flying home for Christmas. I was excited because I would make it home for the annual youth progressive dinner AND I would be taking the second part of the flight with with Shelly, who was going to school in Calgary. We met up at the airport and had some bad news... the weather was bad and our flight had been cancelled!! Oh, and that was the last flight of the day..... well we were disappointed that we would miss the party, but the airline put us up in a hotel and gave us dinner coupons (not sure if they would do that anymore!), and we had a great time together. We did make it home safely the next day.
Christmas Breakfast After my grandparents moved to Castlegar, we started the tradition of going to their place for brunch after we'd opened our presents at home. Grandpa makes the most amazing crepes filled with peaches, cottage cheese and other yummy stuff and baked. After he made them one year he was doomed to make them forever since we all loved them so much. I still miss those crepes!
Speaking of Christmas brunch... I'm heading over to one myself now, so I should go buy some bacon! Merry Christmas!
In honor of the holiday, I wanted to share my top 5 Christmas memories.
Christmas Eve My parents always have a huge party on Christmas Eve, complete with food, music, etc. They invite friends of the family and people who have no family around so they have something to do on Christmas Eve. It usually starts right after church and goes until midnight or later! Us kids started inviting friends out too. I remember one when I was in high school when there must have been 30 people in our house! Some traditions were created as certain guests brought the same things every year. Later I found out that one of the reasons they started doing it was to keep the kids occupied so they wouldn't be begging to open gifts all night.
Christmas Tree I've had a lot of different types of Christmas trees, including my tiny one here that was mailed to me. Tammy and I used to drive out into the bush and load some trees into the back of her truck. One I remember clearly was the year we were going to be having Christmas at my grandparents' home, so there was no need for us to buy a tree (and we wouldn't be there to maintain it), so my mom cut a tree out of paper and taped it to the wall. We drew on the decorations, and put our presents beside it until it was time to load everything in the car to go to Camrose.
First Christmas in Taiwan If you want to read the original posts, you can look here. It was my first Christmas away from home, and I was a little homesick, but had fun spending it was Hope and Amy. We had gifts from Taipei, church parties and performances, and an inordinate amount of stress over saying "Christmas is our favorite holiday" in Chinese. It was interesting to see how Taiwan does and doesn't celebrate Christmas.
Coming home for Christmas One of my years of college, it must have been my first year, I was flying home for Christmas. I was excited because I would make it home for the annual youth progressive dinner AND I would be taking the second part of the flight with with Shelly, who was going to school in Calgary. We met up at the airport and had some bad news... the weather was bad and our flight had been cancelled!! Oh, and that was the last flight of the day..... well we were disappointed that we would miss the party, but the airline put us up in a hotel and gave us dinner coupons (not sure if they would do that anymore!), and we had a great time together. We did make it home safely the next day.
Christmas Breakfast After my grandparents moved to Castlegar, we started the tradition of going to their place for brunch after we'd opened our presents at home. Grandpa makes the most amazing crepes filled with peaches, cottage cheese and other yummy stuff and baked. After he made them one year he was doomed to make them forever since we all loved them so much. I still miss those crepes!
Speaking of Christmas brunch... I'm heading over to one myself now, so I should go buy some bacon! Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas Tsai Lin!
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