Christmas comes
I love Christmas very much.
When it gets colder, I start decorating my house. I don’t illuminate, but hang Christmas ornaments everywhere. When I cook dinner, I usually listen to Christmas songs. I bought a DVD, The Grinch. So, when I have nothing to do at night, I watch it.
On Christmas day, I have to work at school, but after working I’ll bake a cake and cook dinner.
I’m very much looking forward to the day! Am I too childish?
Comments
Hi, Shinobu-san.
I’m very glad to hear from you.
Well, yes, it is very cold here. It was 1 degree 11 o’clock a.m. And now it is about 0. I don’t know whether I, who grew up in Ise, can survive here in Nabari.
I’m looking forward to Christmas very much though I don’t have any particular plans for it. Last week, I decorated the Christmas tree and put it in the living room. It looks so nice!
Many people iluminate their houses and I enjoy watching the illumination on the way home. I want to illuminate my house, too!
Phew, I finally managed to get some Christmas shopping done today.
Luis, an American expatriate in Tokyo, wrote a little piece on Christmas in Japan a few weeks ago. He seems to get most things right, but he’s wrong when he claims that Christmas cake is a “tradition also made in Japan”. Here, for example, is an English Cristmas cake. There may also be traditional American Christmas cakes like the Yule Log (“Yule” or, rather, “Yuletide” is a very old-fashioned word for Christmas ).
Pre-Christmas customs in my part of the world include a Santa Claus that is a bit different from the Americanised version. These photos of Santa Claus and my nieces were taken, I think, three years ago. The hat that Santa wears is called a “mitre”, and it’s what a bishop wears, a high-ranking priest in the Catholic Church. This is because Santa Claus is originally Saint Nicholas of Myra, who was a bishop. Like all the other saints, Nicholas of Myra has a day dedicated to him, and his is 6 December. So, where I’m from, Santa has his big day on 6 December, not on Christmas. That’s when he rides into town with his grimy-faced assistants and visits the children, giving them nuts, sweets and tangerines. When he visits the children in their homes, he praises them if they were well-behaved throughout the year and chides them if they weren’t. Technically, his assistants are authorised to administer physical punishment if the children were really ill-behaved, but they never do that.
The period from the fourth Sunday before Christmas until Christmas Eve is known as Advent, after the Latin word for “arrival”. One tradition that goes with Advent is the Advent wreath, a ring usually formed with pine twigs, decorated with ribbons and whatnot, and supporting four candles. One candle is lit on the first Advent Sunday, two candles on the second, three on the third and all four on the fourth.
Children are also given an Advent calendar, which usually consists of a big image that shows a wintery outdoors scene. Scattered throughout this image there are little doors, numbered 1 to 24, and the child is allowed to open one new door every day, starting on 1 December. Behind these little doors there is some colourful image, and the image for 24 December shows the nativity scene, the newborn Jesus in the manger surrounded by Mary, Joseph, the ox and the mule. I once started a gothic Advent calendar project: no happy, joyful pictures but one dark, heavy, brooding image for each day: a menacing raven, an evil snowman, a crooked angel spreading gossip, a tough guy illegally chopping down fir trees in the forest. I couldn’t bring myself to do the nativity scene in the same spirit, so the project remained unfinished.
Back to the shopping list.
Commenting on this entry is closed.
I love Chiristmas too!
My students and I decorated the tree and brought it to the nursing home. It was fun!
It was really cold today, wasn’t it? I guess it’s much colder in Nabari than here in Nanto. I felt witner has come at last!
Take care.