A Tale of Two Christmases*

The holiday season has passed, and as with almost everything, I cannot help but compare it to my experience abroad.

Let me first preface this post with the how wonderful it was to be with my family for Christmas this year.  My first year in China was particularly difficult, especially around the holidays.  Before China, I had never lived further than 40 short, easily drivable, minutes away from home.  I remember getting depressed as I saw pictures of my family on Facebook enjoying Thanksgiving together, and sad as saw pictures of my family choosing the Christmas tree they were going to get and subsequently decorating it.  That first year in China, we did our best as a group of friendly expats to recreate a traditional holiday experience.  We did a potluck dinner for Thanksgiving, a big breakfast for Christmas, and got each other gifts.   By the time of our first Christmas in China, I had only been abroad for about four months, and the homesickness was hitting me pretty hard.

Awkward shots of the family from my webcam from my first Christmas in China...nothing like celebrating the holidays via the internet thousands of miles away.  I think Gramma's face says it all. 

Our ragtag group of expats Year One in China. 

So let me just reiterate how awesome it was to be home this year.  I met my almost three year old cousin for the first time; she's awesome; I saw family I literally hadn't seen in years; I picked out the Christmas tree with my parents and my sister and her husband; we decorated that tree with ornaments that we have carefully, and with a great deal of sentiment, collected for the past 30 years; I was characteristically wheedled into giving my cousin a back massage; I ate cookies and leftovers for breakfast on Christmas morning while actively avoiding the Jimmy Dean Breakfast Souffle being eaten by everyone else; I played drunken ping pong with my cousins in the basement; my sister and I wore matching outfits. It was a holiday steeped in Jewell (and Extended Family) Tradition. There is no love like the love of your family.

Some traditional family activities. Left: Playing a near impossible game to explain called Pitt, Center: Thanksgiving dinner, and some Christmas Eve Beer Pong to the right. 

But while it was fantastic to be back in hearth and home this year, let me also tell you about Christmas 2012, my second Christmas in China. It was far away from home, family available only via Skype, and far far away from traditional.  It was also one of the best Christmases I have ever had in my life.

Christmas fell in the middle of the week, on a Tuesday, and since it is not recognized as a national holiday in China, we taught on Christmas and Christmas Eve.  Maybe it was this reason that we really didn't go into a great deal of forethought or traditional fuss when we were planning our holiday festivities.  Another game changer was that we had a visitor that Christmas, Miss Amanda Woomer, one of my besties, was visiting China for the holidays.  Maybe her presence (and trying to give her a unique Chinese experience) led to a less traditional Christmas.  Maybe we had just grown past the need to recreate the holidays exactly as we had celebrated them in the past.  Maybe we just wanted to do something different.  I am not entirely sure where the inspiration came from, I am only grateful that we were thus inspired.

Some Christmas Selfies from Miss Amanda Woomer. 

Anyway, we decided that Christmas Eve would be spent by participating in one of our favorite China activities: KTV.  (If you want to learn more about KTV, check out this post.)  We decided that we would attend KTV while wearing matching Chinese Pajama outfits, an early Christmas present from Liv (slippers included) and dine at a local Korean BBQ.  So we left our apartments with 3 giant bottles of wine in a bag, and hoofed it (to the amusement of the locals) over to Korean BBQ.

I don't know about you, but when I go out on the town, I always wear my fleece pajamas and ridiculously poofy slippers. 

Korean BBQ

After getting nice and stuffed on thinly sliced Roast beef, potatoes, veggies, and whatnot, we trekked over to KTV. We were stopped along the way by the thinnest Santa ever, and enjoyed taking several photo ops along the way.   Once we arrived at KTV, we consumed about 2 1/2 of those bottles of wine while singing for several hours.  We sang, we drank, we danced, we were merry. It was amazing.

KTV.  Enough said. 

Striking some Christmas poses. 

The next day, we exchanged presents, ranging from the silly to the sentimental.   We opened said gifts under a second hand Christmas tree that we decorated with popcorn garland and hand made ornaments.  The tree was made complete with the gingerbread house, held together with equal parts frosting and super glue (thanks to international shipping, the gingerbread kit Liv's mom sent underwent some slight damage).  We made breakfast and then we went to school and taught.  Later we Skyped with our respective families, who were only now just waking up on Christmas morning.  It was a fairly simple Christmas, but nonetheless, probably my favorite.

Yeah, alright, so our gifts were largely silly.  Who wouldn't want a giant leg of pork, am I right? 

Award for the Gingerbread House with the Most Heart goes to the picture on the left, and artsy shots of our charlie brown tree to the center and right. 

I guess what I have learned from celebrating the holidays so far away from home, and having come back to celebrate them at home again, is that despite being very different, both were equally awesome.  Neither of these Christmases were better or worse, just different. Because different isn't always bad, sad, or otherwise negative.  Sometimes different is awesome.  And hey, how do things become family traditions anyway?  Someone a decade ago started doing a new and different thing, it was awesome, and so was repeated subsequent years; insta-tradition.  I guess what I am taking away from this is this: don't not do new things because you are afraid you will miss out on doing old things.  So try new stuff, maybe they will become traditions.  At the very least, they will become a great memory: "Hey, remember that year we tromped around Hangzhou in PJ's and sang and drank and stuff?!" I really cannot adequately put into words how awesome that Christmas was...totes worth the year or two or three away from the traditional.

I'll leave you with my favorite video of the night.  An interpretive dance rendition of Cascada's classic "Everytime we Touch".

*Because "A Christmas Carol" would have been too obvious a title. Sigh.