CAN IT REALLY BE CHRISTMAS IF IT IS 80 DEGREES OUTSIDE?

For anyone who has grown up and lived through cold, snowy December winters, Christmas is a cold weather holiday, preferably with the idyllic snow blanket covering the trees and houses to make it a White Christmas. This is considered a “normal” Christmas scenario.

But what happens if you are living and working in the southern hemisphere on December 25th? Instead of snow, you are likely to be celebrating Christmas around the swimming pool and eating your turkey dinner outside. We had these first hand experiences when we were living in Argentina and Venezuela.

Did it seem like Christmas to us? Everyone decorated with colored lights and other seasonal displays, but it was not the same. It was also strange because many people set off their own private fireworks to celebrate Christmas. It was a very noisy, active holiday.

Since Christmas traditions are different in other countries, they may seem unusual to us. As a student one year, when I was preparing to exchange Christmas gifts with the Spanish family I was living with, they told me their custom was to just give one gift on Christmas day and save the big celebration for January 6th, Three Kings’ Day. For a lot of the people in Madrid, it also seemed important to buy a holiday lottery ticket and dream of new beginnings in the upcoming year.

Spending Christmas in England was very similar to many of our own traditions, which is not unusual since a lot of them originated there. Having a turkey or ham dinner on Christmas day was familiar, but the English Christmas pudding was a nice surprise. It resembles a fruit cake with raisins, nuts and cherries, but instead of being baked, it is steamed and has a rounded shape. The crowning touch, however, is the brandy sauce.

No matter where you spend Christmas this year, even if it is not like the picture from your childhood memories, may the hope and goodwill of the season make you happy and extend into the new year.