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!