It's December - Christmas is coming! Last year J didn't really 'get' Christmas in any way, shape or form but now he's a little older, he's understanding a little more - even if he doesn't really get the concept of waiting and putting a new figure on the advent calendar each day when he'd rather put them all on at once.
This has also meant that L and I have had to start having the sort of discussions that we will undoubtedly have multiple times in years to come. How do we celebrate Christmas in Turkey? What traditions do we transfer from our childhoods and the UK? Do we introduce the children to parts of Christmas that are more culturally Christmassy in the UK than religious? Advent seems to be becoming a bigger 'thing' again - what do we do about that?
Those questions are part of bigger issues relating to bring up 'third culture kids' and culture transfer. We live in a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas but we are passport holders of a country that has made celebrating Christmas into something that we're often not comfortable with. But we also believe that celebrating Jesus' birth is a really good thing to do.
We don't really have any right answers and that's okay. We don't have to have everything figured out now, our ideas and practices and traditions will evolve over the years. We're reading and talking and listening and asking questions and slowly plotting our way forward, for this year at least.
There are several balls we're juggling (or plates spinning, or insert alternative metaphor here) here.
First is a desire to teach J and S the (to use a well worn cliche) 'true meaning of Christmas'. The wonder and upside down logic and messiness of a long-expected baby king being born, not in a palace but in much more humble circumstances. The divine love that led to 'heaven's son, sleeping under the stars that he made', to quote one of J's books, and that would lead on towards Easter. Christmas really is good news!
Second is a confused context. Christmas is understandably a normal working day here. There is an inflatable Santa on an inflatable ladder hanging out of a second storey window on a building on our street. There are several shops that you can buy either fake or real trees from, but instead of being called 'Christmas trees', they are called 'New Year Trees' (Yılbaşı ağaçlar). And last year I saw an advertisement with a picture of Santa and a warning not to celebrate New Year because it was a Christian festival. The area where we live has a nominal Christian minority population but even in that culture, from what I understand, Christmas isn't really celebrated on the day and presents are often given at New Year. That's quite a mixed assortment of ideas and practices!
Third is our own family traditions and practices, that L and I have grown up with in our individual families and since our marriage have continued, adapted and incorporated into our own family unit.
And fourth is the British culture of Christmas, that says a 'white Christmas' is a special kind of Christmas; that puts the Nativity alongside Santa and cheesy Christmas hits from the 80s; that involves gravy and Brussels sprouts and Christmas jumpers and board games and big boxes of Quality Street. I'm not condoning all of the above, just trying to explain that there is so much of what we naturally associate with Christmas that is very British and cultural.
So how do we make sense of all of that?
This year, as a family we're making a slightly bigger deal of Advent - we have a new advent calendar with a figure to stick on the nativity scene for each day that will get used each year now. We had a special breakfast on 1st December, then got out our Christmas books and added a new one to the collection. We're doing Advent-themed readings in our family time each evening.
Although this plan did completely derail rather quickly on account of me catching flu on the 2nd December and generously giving it to the rest of my family. (I feel the need to point out here that this was 'proper flu' not just a cough-and-a-cold or man flu. It's been a tough couple of weeks!). But our Advent is now getting back on track.
In addition, J and his friends will probably do some Christmassy crafts together at their weekly play group and I'm hoping we'll get chance to make Christmas treats to give to our friends and neighbours, if I manage to get my act together in time.
Last year we were spoiled as Christmas was on a Sunday, which made it natural to host a Christmas dinner for a group of friends in the afternoon. But this year we're going to do a Christmas dinner on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, because it's a Sunday and our friends will be able to come. Although definitely chicken not turkey, given the price of turkey here. An American friend is probably going to spend Christmas Day with us, maybe some other friends as well, but I'm not sure what that day is going to look like exactly. It's a bit weird trying to figure out how to shape a Christmas Day when there's no morning service, possibly no big dinner to make and no big groups of friends or family. But it is kind of fun having the freedom to do different things.
Now J has figured out that Christmas is Jesus' birthday, he thinks that Jesus needs a birthday cake (and probably candles too). J is a big fan of birthdays and of cake! So I have a suspicion that we'll be starting a new tradition this year of a birthday cake for Jesus. Discussions with J about a birthday present for Jesus are still ongoing, as J's suggestion was 'a yellow one [present]'.
There are plenty of things we're still trying to work out and will be doing for quite some time. Do we try and choose more Nativity-based Christmas books compared to culturally Christmassy books for our book collection? How do we respond to believers who do not have a cultural heritage of Christmas but who want to celebrate Christmas? Should we be encouraging them to start their own traditions? If so, what traditions? What if they want to incorporate traditions such as a decorated tree? How do we go about explaining Christmas to our friends and neighbours who wrap the Nativity and Santa and presents and Christmas trees all up in one big Christmas concept in their minds and whose understanding of the Christmas story horrifies them?
But these questions and issues are too big to sort out now, once for all, so in the meantime we'll keep going with our little traditions and maybe step by step, year by year, we'll start figuring out some appropriate ways to answer some of those questions.
