Christmas in Indonesia

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, yuletide songs being sung by a choir, folks dressed up like eskimos..."

Even after all the years of living in the tropics, when i think of Christmas, i still think of the words above as the ideal Christmas setting...snow, fire in the fireplace, a "real" Christmas tree, family around the table for a meal and all that goes with those ideals. But, the reality is that we do live in the tropics and the normal cues for Christmas are not there...no snow it is just hot and sweaty, definitely no fires in the fireplace and no dressing up like an eskimo unless you are in a really well air-conditioned room. :) This year as we celebrated Christmas i was well aware once again that we are not in the U.S. and that we definitely live in a foreign land and this would be another Christmas of celebrating and having a mix of both our own culture as well as the culture we live in here.

We celebrated Christmas Eve with 2 other families and 2 friends. For the last 10 years or so we have had a Mexican dish called "Chalupa" for Christmas eve dinner. It is a great meal since it mainly sits on the stove top for most of the day while the meat gets tender and juicy. We had a

houseful of good friends and sharing of memories and just talking about life here in Salatiga and family and friends at home. The kids played well in our little side yard and our golden retriever, Winnie, reveled in the attention that he got from them.

We had decided to sleep in on Christmas

morning but unfortunately for me, our cat, Idaho, had other plans for me. She started meowing at 6 am and so i got up and started on our breakfast and just waiting for the rest of the family to wake up. In the mean time the power went out several times and then finally went out for a half hour about mid-morning. (This is nothing compared to my parents who had no electricity from 10:30 Christmas Eve 'til the morning of Christmas - and it is definitely too cold there to not have any electricity). The kids finally got up and we did our normal Christmas morning traditions and then at breakfast it hit me again of where we live. Usually we try to hole up in our house, keep the doors shut and the windows closed so that we can kind of be in our own little world. But during breakfast the mosque went off with the call to prayer. After all it was Friday, the Muslim holy day. So despite trying to block out the outside and just enjoy the inside warmth of our family, we still had reminders through out the day of where we live.

This is not such a bad thing and we are thankful to be living here, but there are times, like Christmas morning, where you want to escape and think about being somewhere else and having the familiar things of the holidays you grew up with. It is

kind of funny though because i think about our two kids and the way they have grown up and i realize that their idea of Christmas is very different than mine because this is where they have grown up, in the tropics, with the mosque going off every single day and the noise of the neighbors around us, the rainy season being Christmas weather and all those kinds of things. I guess it makes me come full circ

le in my thinking...i can try and make Christmas what i think it should be, what my memories drum up in my heart or i can accept where i am and focus on what Christmas is all about. It is a celebration of Jesus, of his reaching beyond His comfort and entering into our world in order to bring salvation to all people. While cultural traditions are important, the message goes beyond all those traditions and "ways" of doing Christmas, and the message is simple. Jesus

came as a baby so long ago to bring home and light to the world. We have much to be thankful for, each and

every Christmas, no matter where we are celebrating :)