Merry Christmas, Kuwait!
It is seven in the morning, and AdventureMan is sleeping in a little, giving me a chance to catch up with YOU.
We have always waited until morning to open our gifts. Last night, after our guests left, we said “No children! We could open our presents tonight!” and then . . . we laughed. It was late and we were tired and we needed our sleep. (I never thought I would see the day, so old that I would want to go to bed more than to open presents.)
Christmas Eve was so special, spent with dear friends, reminiscing over times together, past Christmases. There is one great thing about being an older adult, and that is you are no longer involved in the frenzy of school and church and after-school youth activities. At nine at night, I am not busy trying to get my son’s acolyte robe ironed, ready for the midnight service, I am not frantically putting together the last few plates of cookies that I am required to provide for a million events I don’t really even want to attend. Christmas is much more peaceful, more measured, less frantic now, and I love being able to enjoy the holiday at a more measured pace. Isn’t life full of delicious ironies, that I can enjoy Christmas more in a Moslem country?
One Christian friend told me years ago that Satan tries to distract us during the holiest days. (I would have imagined that to be true for my Moslem friends, too, but I think I remember that Satan is jailed during the month of Ramadan, and cannot tempt you; that if temptation comes, it is coming from your own heart and shows you where you need to work on your character.) Yesterday, as I was working on the Christmas Eve dinner, my kitchen faucet broke – simply would not shut off. Anytime I wanted to use water, I had to go under the sink and turn two knobs, or water would just continue to run.
My friend called and asked if she could use my oven, which, fortunately, I had just turned on, but wasn’t planning to use immediately, so she came for about half an hour and we had an unexpected and delightful visit while I worked on vegetables and she baked her Christmas cake.
If that was Satan, well, he inconvenienced us, but he certainly didn’t get in the way of our enjoying Christmas. Ha Ha on you, Satan!
I intended to take a bunch of photos showing you our Christmas Eve dinner, but it’s like you get on this track, and then the track takes over, and I only have a few images to show you, and nothing really from the meal.
This is my oldest cookbook, I think I even had it before I was married. The glue has started to fail, pages are falling out, there are drops and stains throughout the book, but I don’t want to replace it because it has so many memories. This is my go-to book when I need an overview on how things work, and a basic, tried and true recipe.
Yesterday was a relatively easy day, pulling things out and putting them together. The harder days were before – creating the menu, figuring out what I needed from the store and getting it (AdventureMan helped) and “prepping”, i.e. getting all the walnuts chopped, the onions, the parsley, the cheese grated, etc. That’s the really hard work, I think.
One thing required a little extra preparation – I wanted to make peppermint candy ice cream, something I have made before. but a long time ago. It requires peppermint candy. Once I saw peppermint candy here, but it was a long time ago, in like February – I guess it hadn’t gotten here in time for Christmas. I brought back some from my recent trip to the US.
The ingredients for peppermint candy ice cream are wonderfully easy:
3 cups cream
2 cups crushed peppermint candy
You add one cup to the cream, put it in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, you stir it, and put it in the ice cream making machine to process. When it is nearly finished (it is thickened and the machine starts to labor) you put the remaining one cup of crushed peppermint candy in through the tube where you can make additions, allow it to process maybe 30 seconds, then – it is finished.
No, there was no added sugar, there is enough in the candy to make it sweet enough. Because it is pure cream and no additives, it is very very fattening and very very delicious.
How will we spend Christmas Day? When AdventureMan gets up, I will heat him up a cup of Christmas punch and we will open the presents in our stockings:
Here is what the rule is – laid down in my family many many uncountable years ago – as long as you believe in Santa Claus, Santa Claus will come. To this day, we believe in Santa Claus, so when we wake up on Christmas morning, we have stockings with little gifts. (I think maybe one of mine sparkles ๐ )
We also open gifts from family – and the gifts from our son and his wife arrived just in time, yesterday, and are under the tree!
Then, we will get ready for church, and go and greet all our church friends – Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!
That is . . . unless the plumber comes to fix the faucet. Yes, for my friends who do not live in Kuwait, for the rest of the world, this is just any old day, and plumbers come on Christmas day. They do NOT come on Fridays, the Moslem world Sunday, so if the plumber comes – and we just never know when that might be – I would have to miss church.
We will gather again tonight with friends for Christmas dinner. Unless the plumber comes.
(No, Satan, I can roll with this. You are NOT going to ruin my Christmas!)
I wish you all a great day, a wonderful, sweet day.
PS. The Qatteri Cat celebrated by eating three Kuwaiti shrimp. For some reason, they are not so good for him, so he only gets them on special occasions. He would live on only shrimp if he had his way.
“I’ll be home for Christmas – if only in my dreams”
This is a nightmare year for people trying to get home for Christmas in the United States – weeks of storms have caused snarled schedules and cancelled trains and planes, stranding passengers eager to be home with family for Christmas.
Worse – my friends tell me – many groceries have not been resupplied, but that’s OK because many of their customers can’t get to the stores anyway. It’s hit merchants hard in what is already thought to be one of the most dismal selling seasons in a long, long time.
Here’s a write up from National Public Radio:
Winter Storms Frustrate Holiday Travel Nationwide
by Scott Neuman
NPR.org, December 23, 2008 ยท Bitter cold temperatures and snow have placed the northern half of the nation in a deep freeze, affecting travel in planes, trains and automobiles just as the holiday season gets under way.
Some of the worst winter storms on record have cut a swath from the Pacific Northwest to New England. Across the country, tens of thousands of people are without power after freezing rain and strong winds caused transmission lines to come down.
Heavy snowfall in western Oregon has caused traffic to come to a near standstill along Interstate 5, and state highways through the northern edge of the Coast Range are closed.
Amtrak’s Cascades passenger train service between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia, was halted, but officials said they expected it to resume on Tuesday. Greyhound bus service in Portland and Seattle was also shut down.
At the Seattle-Tacoma airport, thousands of people have been waiting in hours-long lines to re-book canceled flights.
“There’s no flights going into [Las] Vegas that has any available seating,” Air Force Airman Alex James told NPR’s Morning Edition.
James said he and three other Air Force buddies hope to avoid driving from Seattle to Las Vegas, where their families are preparing for the holidays.
“We leave on our deployment on the first of January,” James said. “So, however long it takes us to get back from here is how much reduced our time at home is.”
Alaska and Horizon airlines, the West Coast’s principal carriers, resumed limited service Monday and the carriers said they hoped to resume near-normal schedules Tuesday at Seattle-Tacoma and have things normal flights by Wednesday.
In the East, the town of Eustis, Maine, got nearly 3 1/2 feet of snow. Snow and sleet โ but no additional accumulation โ are expected Tuesday in the Northeast.
In the nation’s midsection, the situation is just as bad.
In Illinois, which has experienced subzero conditions and wind chills as low as minus 35 degrees in recent days, temperatures are expected to rise into the 20s Tuesday. But with the reprieve will come several inches of snow, according to the forecast.
More snow is expected across the upper Midwest. Michigan could get as much as a foot of snow, while ice, snow and sleet are in the forecast for Indiana, where many people have been without electricity.
Travelers have been stranded in airports as they wait for flights to resume so they can make their way to friends and families for the holidays. Routes to much of the Pacific Northwest have been canceled, and flights to the East Coast, including New York and New Jersey, have been delayed by hours.
You can read the entire article by clicking HERE.
The Year of the Secret Santa
One year AdventureMan was attending school in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, a special school to train men who aspired to the highest ranks of the military. There were lots and lots of families, all approximately the same age group, and there were lots of family activities. For many of us, it was one of the few times we were stationed in the United States. It was also a high-testosterone, highly competitive environment.
We lived on a small, unique street, about half students and half permanent party – teachers, instructors, people who were not part of the huge student cadre. The “old-timers” organized us into a neighborhood. We had block parties, we babysat one another’s kids, we went to auctions together, and we kept each other’s secrets. Best of all – they introduced us to Secret Santa.
Just before Thanksgiving, we had a potluck and drew names. Each family drew the name of another family, and until the Christmas party, when you revealed whose name you had, you acted as Secret Santa to that family.
It’s funny – I can’t remember all the things that were done for us or things we did for our family; all I can remember is that we had a LOT of fun, and not a single one of us knew who our Secret Santa was. I remember that one of the guest speakers at the school was an old friend of my husband’s. He came to dinner at our house, and after dinner, we asked him to move his car to our Secret Santa family, and then deliver a breakfast bread to them. He was sort-of famous, and when he showed up at the Secret Santa family with the bread, we were hiding upstairs in a darkened bedroom, watching, and we could see the amazement on their faces when this revered gentleman delivered the bread. They were astounded he would be delivering their Secret Santa gift, and they could not imagine whose friend he might be. Oh, what fun!
Baked goods, toys, snow shoveled off the walks, handmade Christmas ornaments – it was all so much fun. At the Christmas dinner, when we all revealed who we had been Santa to, there were shouts of joy and whoops of laughter. Best of all, it really knit us together as a neighborhood, doing good to one another. It was one of the very best Christmas times I can remember.
Good Morning, Kuwait
Another gorgeous winter day dawning in Kuwait, with a high expected around 77ยฐR/25ยฐC today, while my poor family in the US is shivering with cold. I have a good friend who had three different family members stranded in three different airports, trying to get home for Christmas, and snow accumulating up to 18 inches while she prays for their safe arrivals.
Have a sweet day, Kuwait. ๐
I will spend the day preparing for major meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Mom, I am making your Cranberry Salad. ๐
Christmas In Kuwait 2008
I’ve lived in so many Islamic countries, and I have never seen an Islamic country that celebrates – or allows the expat population to celebrate – Christmas – so lavishly.
In some countries, you live on rumors. Can the compound residents put up Christmas lights this year? (Yes! And all your Moslem neighbors put up lights, too, and the compound is like a fairy-land, and people walk around in groups at night ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing over the fanciful displays) or is this the year when it’s all word-of-mouth about the Indian grocer who has Christmas trees hidden in his back room but there is ne’ry a Christmas decoration to be seen on the streets or in the windows, and people are told not to decorate or to draw any attention to themselves . . .
Not so in Kuwait. Thanks be to God for religious tolerance here, allowing us to decorate for Christmas, allowing us to celebrate according to our private beliefs.
For my stateside and European virtual visitors, here are some of the Kuwait Christmas sights this year:
As we were waiting for our flight back to Kuwait, AdventureMan overheard several students talking about their experiences.
“You should see New York!” one student was saying, “There is even a big sign saying ‘Happy Birthday, Jesus!'” and they all laughed.
Why do you think we are so happy, dear ones? Why do you think we celebrate? Why do you think we get together and sing joyful songs, and try to delight one another with special, thought-filled presents? The greatest gift of all, we believe, is born on Christmas Day!
Qatteri Cat Says “Whaaaaaat?”
Those little eyes look SO innocent, don’t they?
Don’t believe it for a moment!
Every morning, I have to gather up ornaments that have been knocked off. I have to glue them back together (I don’t hang anything very valuable on the lower branches, but it is annoying to have to glue things back all the time.)
He had his eye on one ornament and I said his name. He looked at me. His eyes said “Whaaaaaaat” you know, that three syllable what that means “why do you think I would do something like that” when you are thinking of doing something like that.
You don’t fool me one bit, Qattari Cat.
Christmas Ornaments from Here, There and Everywhere
Ten years ago when we put almost our entire life into storage, we had no idea we would be gone this long. We had no idea we would live in four different countries, and that we wouldn’t see our things again for lo, these many years.
Our first contract, I was allowed one thousand pounds. Do you know how little one thousand pounds is? Think clothing, think basic necessities – 1000 lbs. just isn’t very much.
I packed just a very few Christmas ornaments, figuring I could pick things up along the way. Fortunately for us, the next country, after Saudi Arabia, was Germany, the land of Christmas ornaments. Our tree is eclectic. It’s not necessarily a tree with appeal to anyone else; it is a very personal Christmas tree, with lots of memories and stories. Lucky for you, I won’t bore you will all of them. ๐
We are sentimental. When we can, we decorate the tree together, and we remember with each ornament. . . When he was young, our son would get so impatient with us, and our remembering!
Here is the very first ornament our son ever made in school – it is a dreamcatcher; his teacher was very into the American Southwest and American Indian traditions:
We met and married in Heidelberg, so we always have that ornament with us:
My ties to the Pacific Northwest:
AdventureMan’s love of Africa and the Middle East:
Religious symbols:
Beautiful German antique silver walnuts and pinecones:
And memories of places we’ll remember . . .
Whew! I’m tired, too! Think I will go join the Qatteri Cat in a catnap!
Brrrr. . . . Shiver . . . Cold in Kuwait
When I checked my WeatherUnderground readings for this morning, I laughed when I saw that the weather at 0630 in Kuwait was exactly the same as in Damascus, Syria, and colder than Seattle! Oh you disbelievers! Here is what it looked like:
It is going to be another GORGEOUS day in Kuwait – cold, clear and sunshiny. OK, AdventureMan, you are right . . . it is nice to have sunshine every day. ๐
As lovely as it is, this weather is very hard on the poor, without adequate protection from the cold. Please, if you are feeling generous, please help out the good people at Operation Hope – Kuwait as they gather gently used shoes, coats and warm bedding to distribute to the poorest of the poor. No matter what you can give (they can always use your monetary donations, too!) every penny will benefit those who need it the most – the very very poor.
Qatteri Cat Trims the Tree
3:30 in the morning, and I am wide-awake. I can lie in bad and toss and turn, or I can get up and make use of all this energy now and take a nap later, which is what I decide to do. I want to get a Christmas tree up, and I am hoping Qatteri Cat will not take too much interest. Two years ago, he pulled the tree over in the middle of the night, utter chaos.
Toss a load of laundry in the washer, pull down the tree box, get it set up, lights on – it’s great putting on lights while it is still dark out (I can see the ring of fishing boats along the horizon, and I shiver, thinking it must be really, really cold out there with the near zero Centigrade overnight temperatures) because I can see where I am putting them and how they will look when it is all finished, not too many lights in one area and big empty spaces elsewhere.
And then – the ornaments. When I have my own house, I usually have one big tree in the living room and one smaller one in the family room. The big tree has all the beautiful ornaments we have collected over the years, and the smaller tree is usually a theme tree – Maybe all red and white, pepperminty, one year and all blue and silver another. It’s my experiment tree. But we never mess with the serious family tree – it is thoroughly eclectic, and that is the way we want it to be. Hmmm. I think I will do a separate entry later on the ornaments.
The lights are on – just as the sky is beginning to lighten, the Qatteri Can and I finish up. The Qatteri Cat goes and gets his babies to share the tree with. Thanks be to God, he is not showing any interest in pulling on anything this year. We enjoy the lights together.
We put on Christmas music and I get a cup of coffee so I can sit and see if the tree needs more. Here is one of my very favorite Christmas CD’s (I have a collection of very old Christmas music, along with some very good more recent Christmas music)
The Qatteri Cat says he is finished. He is exhausted. He is going to take a nap. Wouldn’t it be nice, to have the life of a housecat?
Night Flight
Arriving at the next airport, we find our flight is delayed, while a seat is found for every single passenger. As I look around, I feel dismay – this flight is like 3/4 college students. We thought with Eid having ended, the plane would be half empty – NOT so! The lounge is packed with twenty-somethings headed home to Kuwait on Christmas break from their universities in the USA.
I used to be one of those. My parents lived in Germany; my sister and I would travel home. One difference, we were flying military planes, so they would wait until a whole planeload of college students had gathered and then send us all off to Frankfurt on one plane. It was party party party, card games, laughing, talking, catching up with friends from all over Europe, some flying on to bases in north Africa and Greece . . . I don’t think we had any bases in the Middle East at that time (It was a LONG time ago!)
But payback is hell. Now I am about to board a flight full of young people like I used to be. I can kiss a good night’s sleep goodbye! Every single seat on the plane is taken, and it is a BIG plane. I prepare for the worst. I remember those days . . .
Here is what really happened: this was the nicest, most polite group of college age students I have ever met. When they gathered at the food places, they talked quietly. Most of them slept or quietly watched movies the entire flight. The flight was one of the quietest I have ever been on. The bathrooms stayed relatively clean. I was so totally impressed.
If there are Kuwaiti parents reading this blog whose college students are flying home around now, you can pat yourselves on the back. You raised young people with excellent manners. ๐
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