New Traditions

This was Fabi's first Christmas - Here's the story:

Christmas is the time when families get together to celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ. Normally, people get together for dinner on Christmas Eve and enjoy a meal where the main dish is turkey or ham.

However, given my culinary background I knew that preparing a Christmas dinner was a little too much for me, so I thought I'd prepare some Christmas snacks, where the main dish was ham...sandwiches! India is a widely vegetarian country, but thanks to My Dollar Store and its variety of imported goodies, I got canned ham! What did you expect from a novice like me?


I ensembled several other snacks and with the help of Ishan we had a X-Mas Hors d'œuvres table (instead of X-Mas Dinner table), but it worked because we ate so much that dinner was not necessary! So...we had mint flavored eggnog and pears cooked in port wine (from Goa!) and X-Mas cake from Monginis.

Considering the fact that it was my first time ever organizing and hosting a get-together like this, it was no surprise that I forgot to do several things, like:

-sprinkling nutmet on the eggnog when I was serving it
-taking the cake out of the package before putting it on the table
-and serving the dessert (Red and green layered jelly with fruit)


Our neighbor Grace joined Sopan, Priya, Ishan, Fabi and me on X-Mas Eve. Since it was Fabi's first Christmas, I thought it would be appropriate to tell him the story of Jesus, which I read from his own pop-up book:

"God sent an angel to tell Mary that she was going to be the Mother of His only son!
Mary and her husband, Joseph, traveled to Bethlehem. The town was crowded, so they stayed in a stable. The baby Jesus was born there!
Out in the countryside, an angel appeared to a group of shepherds. "Don't be afraid," said the angel. "The Savior you've been waiting for has been born!"
Far away, three wise men began their journey. They collected their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and mounted their camels. They knew that they had to see this King for themselves. The wise men and the shepherds went to the stable to see the baby Jesus. They all felt blessed for being a part of God's plan for the world."


I went on to explain that since Jesus' birthday is a special one, everybody gets a present. I 'played' Santa Claus and started to distribute the gifts under the tree. Fabi had a lot of fun playing with the wrapping paper.

With Christmas music in the background we finished opening the presents and then headed for the table to enjoy all the snacks. We had a nice evening.

Next day, I went to Church and came back to enjoy the day watching Fabi play in his new inflatable swimming pool. Later we had our family Christmas picture taken and headed to the local mall to spend some time out.

I will post several more pictures in my Yahoo album soon, but as of now, I leave you with my favorite snap of this holiday: