Things I've learned from celebrating Christmas in Istanbul

• Turkey is way more expensive than chicken in the supermarket. Like 2.5x per kg more expensive. And I don't even think turkey tastes better than chicken.

• If you invite over a group of international friends for Christmas dinner and have Yorkshire puddings, be prepared for questions. "Do only people from Yorkshire eat them? Is it savoury or sweet? Why is it called a pudding?"

• Similarly, do not make cultural assumptions and forget to tell people that we pour gravy on our food rather than in our glasses. Thankfully one of our guests clarified first.

• And when your mother has lovingly brought over a Christmas pudding because she knows how much her son-in-law appreciates Christmas pudding and you are planning on serving that Christmas pudding to guests, remember that bought Christmas puddings generally require a microwave (or more hob space than we had available since we were also cooking Christmas dinner at the same time). We don't have a microwave. But we can now confirm that Christmas pudding can be heated in a slow cooker (but if you are cooking your chicken in the slow cooker, best leave the pudding for another day...).

• It is strangely difficult to find rolls of wrapping paper here. But if you happen to be in IKEA after Christmas, you can buy some for next year.

• Small things will catch you out, like when you catch yourself thinking, "oh, maybe I can order that online in the post-Christmas sales" then suddenly realise there won't be post Christmas sales. 

• Shops don't close early on Christmas Eve! And they're even open on Christmas Day, should you need it.

• Christmas will feel much less commercialised if you live in a country where most people don't celebrate Christmas. 

• Even if most people don't celebrate Christmas, you may still find that there is one flat on your street with an inflatable Santa on a ladder hanging off an outside window.

• There is no list of "things you must have/do/see" for it to feel like a "real Christmas". It's great to be able to start and continue traditions where we can but our traditions should come second to serving others and making them comfortable. 

• In a similar vein, I had visions of starting a new tradition of a cosy Christmas Eve spent watching a Christmas film together as a family until I realised that often there are Christmas Eve carol services here so that new tradition was never going to get off the ground. I would like to tell you that I was super-enthusiastic from the start about getting to go and celebrate the birth of a certain baby at a carol service that would fall directly over J's tea time and lead to a delayed bedtime for him but unfortunately that wasn't quite the case. However, in the end I was glad that we could go and afterwards I was even more glad that we'd gone. More importantly, I was reminded that the baby whose birth we celebrate at Christmas shapes our traditions, not the other way around. 

It's nearly Christmas!

Somehow I feel like Christmas has crept up on us this year. Maybe that's a sign of getting (slightly) older. I prefer to think of it as the consequence of not having an advent calendar this year (because I suddenly remembered advent in November and had grand designs of making a fabric calendar in time, but then I realised that with my track record on sewing projects, Christmas 2017 might be more realistic).

But this last week we've been getting more into the Christmas spirit, despite L being heard to say a few days ago "at least I won't have to listen to 'last Christmas I gave you my heart' this year". Our artificial Christmas tree arrived from IKEA and we've got a slightly tacky gold star/snowflake thing hanging in our lounge doorway that, judging by J's repeated "Dar! Dar!", he was quite excited about.

Our Christmas tree. Please don't judge the decorating. My excuse is that we basically have to redecorate the tree every day as most of the baubles that are within reach of an 18 month old magically find their way from the tree onto the floor. And by 'redecorate', I mean 'put back on the tree in any random position because we'll be doing exactly the same thing tomorrow'.

Christmas Day is not a public holiday in Turkey, but I think New Year's Day is an official holiday. Obviously this year, Christmas falls on a Sunday, so there will be services but usually any special services are held on the evening of Christmas Eve so people can attend.

Interestingly, New Year is often confused with Christmas. My friend told me that she was once given a leaflet telling Turks not to celebrate New Year because it is a Christian festival. Any Christmas-sy looking decorations that you might be able to find in select shops in certain areas of the city are all to celebrate New Year of course, and even our Christmas tree came in a box marked 'yıl başı ağacı' which translates as 'New Year tree''.

But we are looking forward to Christmas. My job for this weekend is to make some mince pies for L and to make and freeze our Christmas morning breakfast croissants. We'll be making as traditional an English Christmas dinner as we can. Though probably chicken not turkey due to (a) the additional effort needed to find a turkey and (b) oven space. And including Yorkshire pudding because that's traditional in my family, thanks to my sister. And probably not 'pigs in blankets', though I might try and source some pork cocktail sausages. But other than that, definitely traditional. We're looking forward to hosting some friends from our weekly group for Christmas lunch and when we gathered this week, we were debating whether or not to set the Christmas pudding alight, but the jury is still out on that one. 

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

This world is not safe

This morning we woke up to find that there had been another terrible attack in our city.

There was something incongruous about reading the news while J bounced in, happy to be awake and alive and looking forward to breakfast, our child who we chose to bring to this city.

But then I remembered that this world is not safe.

At this point, I could discuss the nuances of how unsafe does a country need to be before you either don't go or, if you're there already, start packing to leave. There are issues of managing risk that could be considered. I could even throw in some theological truths, or at least cliches.

But actually, I want to talk about a fundamental assumption that Westerners often make. L and I are from an anomalous generation. We grew up 40-50 years after the end of World War Two, in a period of relative peace, stability and prosperity in the West. Yes, some Western countries have been involved in wars and armed struggles in the last few decades - but nothing like the scale of the first half of the twentieth century, or indeed most of history in most of the world up to this point.

In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that the UK was a fairly safe place to live.

The logical result of this is that there are many people in the West for whom being safe is the de facto state of being, and it then becomes an inbuilt assumption into our thinking. And so doing anything or going anywhere that challenges that basic assumption  is often seen as ill-advised, foolhardy or even just plain dangerous.

It's why some people asked us before we left the UK how we could take our child to a country that has had its fair share of tragic incidents over the last 18 months.

But guess what? This world is not safe.

We often find comfort in pursuing the illusion of safety. It gives us peace of mind and when something terrible and tragic does happen, we can console ourselves with the idea that we'd done everything we could. But terrible and tragic events do happen. Even if the UK seems relatively safe from war and famine, there are terrorist attacks, crime, motorway pile ups and all manner of accidents. And even if you skirt all those dangers, maybe your own body will betray you and you'll get a disease or illness.

Nowhere are we promised that we get to live life in a safe environment. Over the course of history, the world has not generally been a very safe place. And there's a good argument to be made that the period of stability and peace we have enjoyed will not continue to the same degree in the future.

Our true safety is not a location, it's a person. And our objective in life is not to live comfortable lives in as much safety as we can afford but to follow someone who was born in a land occupied by a foreign army, who escaped being murdered when his family became refugees in a neighbouring country. Someone who taught people while religious leaders plotted his death and who was tortured and executed when, in human terms, he had many years of life left.

We're not promised physical safety in this world. Is a servant greater than his master? But for those who believe and follow a man who death could not keep its hold on, we are promised eternal safety and security. And in an unsafe and uncertain world, it's that sure and certain hope that I want to cling onto and that I long for my children to hold on to.

"The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."