This is going to be our third Christmas in Turkey! We're especially excited about this year because in addition to my parents' visit at the end of last month, L's parents are coming straight after Christmas.
But as it's our third Christmas, we've also had time to slowly start to think about how we celebrate Christmas in a country where Christmas is not celebrated. What traditions do we bring from a 'traditional British Christmas'? What can we happily leave behind? As people who believe the amazing news that our Saviour humbled himself by becoming human and being born as a baby, how does that impact how we celebrate Christmas? How do our traditions and celebrations appear to our non-believing neighbours and our believing friends? We started to think more about it last year, then we all got proper flu and that wiped out at least the first half of December. I'm sure we will continue to think and adapt our traditions.
But this year, J is now three and understands a bit more about Christmas (as evidenced the other day when he announced "I think that when it is Christmas, I am going to get a Lightning McQueen [character from the Cars Disney film] duvet cover". He's not.)
On the 1st December, we had a special breakfast and got all of our Christmas books out. There was also be a new Christmas advent book. This year it's 'The Christmas Promise', part of the 'Tales that tell the truth' series. We already have a couple of books from that series that we love so I had high hopes for 'The Christmas Promise' and it is an excellent book (and it gets bonus points for not mentioning a stable and the fact when the wise men arrive, they're presenting gifts to a small toddler rather than a newborn baby). Last year our advent book was 'Song of the stars' by Sally Lloyd-Jones and we loved that too.
We now have a fabric Advent Calendar that we can re-use every year. This year I'm planning on putting in some small chocolates and occasional small presents (like a new pair of socks) for some of the days, but we're also going to have some 'acts of kindness' to do on different days, like baking cookies and taking them to neighbours, making a special effort to share our toys, or concentrating on using kind words. And then our Christmas tree will go up in the next couple of days as well.
Over the last couple of years, I've noticed that as a family, we're making advent a bigger thing. I think there's been a bit of a resurgence of thinking about advent in certain circles in recent years so in some ways we're jumping on that bandwagon. In other ways, it fits the situation here. In the UK, it's rather difficult to avoid Christmas in December and the weeks leading up to Christmas can be jam-packed with activities, so we often need to be reminded to slow down and take time to remember the miracle of the Incarnation. Here, especially outside of certain areas of Istanbul, there is (understandably) absolutely no way that you could know it's December and Christmas will be in a couple of weeks. So advent is becoming an important way for us to build up to Christmas and have time to read and talk about the amazing good news of Christmas.
As for Christmas itself, on the Sunday before Christmas Day there will be a special service to invite visitors too. In Turkey, Christmas Day is a normal working day so our Wednesday midweek meeting will be a special gathering for the believers. It's interesting seeing how the believers celebrate Christmas - some things are clearly borrowed from the West (Christmas trees!) and even here it is a special opportunity to invite people to a Sunday service. Other things are less important e.g. present giving.
We have really enjoyed hosting lots of people, especially international students, for a special Christmas meal close to Christmas Day in previous years in both the UK and Turkey, and as we have quite a lot of students here, both Turkish and international, that is something we'll probably do again - likely on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas. We usually do a traditional British Christmas dinner (although it will be chicken not Turkey on the menu and I think we'll be skipping the pork sausages this year now we're out of Istanbul!), which has gone down well in the past.
As for Christmas Day itself, we're planning for it to be a low key family day. There may be a family Christmas dinner and there will definitely be chicken and stuffing sandwiches at some point. The good news is that I think we probably have a higher chance of a White Christmas than if we were in the UK, and if we drive part way up Mount Erciyes, we are guaranteed to find snow!
We have really enjoyed hosting lots of people, especially international students, for a special Christmas meal close to Christmas Day in previous years in both the UK and Turkey, and as we have quite a lot of students here, both Turkish and international, that is something we'll probably do again - likely on the Sunday afternoon before Christmas. We usually do a traditional British Christmas dinner (although it will be chicken not Turkey on the menu and I think we'll be skipping the pork sausages this year now we're out of Istanbul!), which has gone down well in the past.
As for Christmas Day itself, we're planning for it to be a low key family day. There may be a family Christmas dinner and there will definitely be chicken and stuffing sandwiches at some point. The good news is that I think we probably have a higher chance of a White Christmas than if we were in the UK, and if we drive part way up Mount Erciyes, we are guaranteed to find snow!
