Our Christmas Story continued…

12/24 – Christmas Eve day, Tony continued decorating the tree…he basically didn’t stop for 2 days straight. We joked that our tree now looks like the Armenian Orthodox church with ornaments hanging EVERYWHERE. And more baking went on, of course, while the movie Elf was playing… (“Is there sugar in syrup? Then YES!!!”)

That evening we went to a Christmas Eve Party at the lovely and posh home of Beverley (UK) and Sharon (New Zealand), friends of ours who work at the Embassy. They had a massive spread of good food - mulled wine, eggnog, Mince pies (which are so British), Stollen (German traditional bread) and other things that people brought native to their homeland during the holidays. I made Gingerbread cookies and Nicole made mini-pizza’s and peppermint hot chocolate. (Oh and it wasn't just a girls party, which is what the picture makes it seem like).

25/12 - Christmas Day was rainy and cold and it hailed a little bit – but that didn’t stop us from having a great day. Of course, I never left the house so it didn’t matter anyway. But Nicole and Tony went out that morning for some more last minute shopping and wound up coming back looking like Santa and Mrs. Clause! That morning all the packages sent overseas from family arrived – 5 packages! AND because it’s a normal working day for everyone, the post office was open, so they could go and pick them up.

Tony’s parents and Kathy, a friend of ours, came over for dinner. Nicole and I really prepared everything like we do in America (or I should really say what my mom, aunt and grandparents do) and it all turned out so good…including the COW that we roasted in the oven. I never saw meat like that before and Nicole commented on turning vegetarian, until it came out looking beautiful and tasting delicious. Then we remembered, THAT’S what meat should look like.

Armenian friends, Ohan (who was the best man in Tony and Nicole’s wedding) and his family came over afterwards for dessert. There was a smorgasbord of dessert: Tiramisu they had made and brought over, Panetone (very Italian), pumpkin pie (very American and made for the Armenians who couldn’t fathom the idea of a sweet pumpkin mix, and I still don’t know if they caught onto the idea very much), Torte di Noci (this is a walnut tort, an Italian favorite that we always see on our tables at this time of year but never really eat – until we made it ourselves) and other various cookies. There was tons of food…and playing in the background this time was White Christmas, the all time best Christmas movie where Bing Crosby’s voice glides over the mellow sounds of the title song. Awesome.

No Christmas would be complete, of course, without a viewing of The Marx Brothers, A Night at the Opera. We were all pretty exhausted by that time but forced ourselves to stay up and watch this movie once again even though we can recite most of the lines by heart. It’s SUCH a funny movie and brings back memories of watching this at home for years!

And of course, we had a phone call from the ENTIRE family in NYC as they were eating dinner. That was nice, hard to understand, long distance and everyone talking at once (like our family tends to do) but it was nice to share the moment with them. I hope it was nice for my parents to wake up their first Christmas with no kiddies there - just 3 cats, who hopefully were just as good replacements for us. Next year mom and dad, we'll all be somewhere together! (We don't want to have to cook everything again...hahah).

But it was VERY cool when I realized that the real reason we are celebrating occured only just down the road. Jesus was born only about 20 minutes from here in Bethlehem. Of course, the stable isn't there, it looks completely different and was an entirely different world back then, but it brought it all home to realize this is the area of the world where it all began – and will end someday.