Running with the theme of the holidays, I wanted to continue to relate my holiday adventures as a foreigner living in Thailand. This is the first year that I haven't been home for the holidays and Christmas and that was definitely an adjustment and at times it was difficult to be away. But as I've written before, I tried to make do by incorporating old traditions into my celebration and creating new ones. Recently, I have been reflecting on what it means to be in the US and Colorado for Christmas and I have come up with a few things I miss (and note that this does not include family, which is implicit…I do miss my family and would love to be able to spend Christmas with them). Here is what I came up with
1. Having a Christmas holiday
Being one of only a small number of people in Thailand who celebrate Christmas, I like every other person here, went to work today. I guess that’s what I get for trying to celebrate Christmas and country that is 95% Buddhist. So, I went to work on Christmas Day and taught classes like it was a normal day. The strange thing was that it wasn't weird. It didn't feel like Christmas and I wasn't missing anything by being at work so in a way it wasn't a big deal to teach on Christmas precisely because no one here really celebrates it.
2. Snow
I miss the snow and being in the snow. I have been fortunate enough to have the chance to bundle up in whatever warm clothes I have as we are experiencing a cold snap here during the cold season, but alas it only gets down to about 45 degrees and there is and never has been any snow in Thailand (unless you count the amusement park attraction in Bangkok aptly named “Snow World” which, as the name implies is a world of snow. It’s a large freezer filled with snow and other assorted Christmas and cold weather items. There is even a sledding hill. It’s an almost laughable attempt at creating a true snowy world, but it’s a heck of a try and at the time of my visit I was ecstatic and was frolicking around like the rest of the folks there). It also does not help that Colorado was just hit with two incredible snow storms.
3. Eggnog
This one is pretty self-explanatory. How I long for that sweet creamy deliciousness that you only find once a year.
4. Christmas (and Thanksgiving) dinner
There is nothing like a turkey dinner complete with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli and cheese sauce, cranberry and topped of with cherry pie and vanilla ice cream. One of the memories I keep going back to is waking up Christmas morning and beginning to cook. The whole family gets together in the kitchen and get the turkey ready to put in the oven and are buttering bread for the stuffing. Mom is sauteing the celery, onions, mushrooms and carrots for the stuffing and we all are working impatiently as we yearn to open presents. Then as we ope presents, the turkey starts to cook and the smells slowly fill the whole house and by the time 2:00 roles around we are all starving and ready to dig in. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
While I have been able to reflect on what I miss, I have also been able to create some new traditions and attempt to create a Thai Christmas celebration of my own. This has been quite the adventure and I’m happy to say that at least some of the efforts were met with tremendous success.
1. A Christmas tree
I wrote about the Christmas tree already so reference that post if you want to read about my Thai Christmas tree.
2. My own Christmas dinner
I am the proud new renter of a house with a kitchen and so I decided to try my hand at a Christmas dinner of sorts. I decided to try to put together whatever I could find out here into something that resembled a Christmas dinner so I bought a roasted chicken, some potatoes, green beans and picked up some chicken stock from a local roadside restaurant restaurant and proceeded to cook and eat a Christmas dinner of roasted chicken, homemade mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans. There was one thing missing from this all though - cranberry. The canned cranberry that we pull out every Thanksgiving and Christmas adds a bit of red to the browns, whites and greens and balances out the meal. But canned cranberry (nor any type of cranberry) doesn't really exist out here. After searching for a bit, I found the next best thing - I bought a cranberry flavored wine cooler and had that during dinner…so I got my cranberry.
3. Opening presents
This year I was able to open present over a period of 5 days. My parents sent a package out and it arrived about two weeks before Christmas. I put the presents under the tree and there they sat. But because of the schedule I have with teaching and the time difference between here and Colorado (and my desire to attempt to extend the holiday season as long as possible because it's so hard to create out here), I started to open presents on the 20th of December and opened about 3 presents each day opening my last present on Christmas day. I did this while talking to my family on the phone so it was quite the scene as I held the phone in one hand and tried to open presents with the other. Meanwhile, both of us (my family and I) were using speaker phone so I couldn't really understand any of them since they were all talking at once and they couldn't understand me because the phone kept slipping.
Here are some pictures from my Christmas celebrations. I've included some pictures of my dinner, tree and me opening presents and the Christmas celebration that we had at school. Enjoy!
Overall, Christmas was good and it was interesting to be away from home and in a place where Christmas is not really a big holiday. But they do celebrate New Years and they celebrate it in a big way…they actually celebrate it three times (the western new year (January 1), the Thai new year (April) and the Chinese new year (February)). That's the topic of my next entry. Until then, I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years!
RM
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