Feliz Navidad

Christmas just didn’t feel like Christmas this year. I don’t know how else to describe it, though I’ll try. It was sunny with a high of 63. You can’t get that in Boston in late December. Instead, Boston got blanketed by 10 inches of snow the next day!

The Americans at Isikkent (all 5 of us) decided to congregate at our headmaster’s apartment for a Christmas dinner. In the late morning and early afternoon, I prepared the mashed potatoes, Jen made some gingerbread cookies (thanks to the molasses I illegally smuggled into the country) and some sort of veggie cheesecake and Maddy made some delicious tomato/pepper/carrot soup. Ralph picked us up with our food around 4pm and we hung out at his place for the night. Lou, the librarian, brought the wine. I think they made their way through 4 or 5 bottles over the course of the day, while Ralph kept trying to push beer on me (apparently he has a ton leftover from something and he wants to get rid of it).

Amazingly, Ralph, through some connections, was able to procure a HAM for Christmas in a Muslim country. You’d usually have to pay through the nose for something like that, but he even managed to get it for free. So we had a big honey baked ham along with our potatoes, cheesecake, soup, and ginger bread cookies. It all tasted great, but I missed all the usual Kelly Family dinner and dessert fare more than you know- all that post-dinner mudpie? Don’t get me started. Unfortunately, I was still feeling the ill effects from drinking some bad Sprite from the movies the previous night, so after a few bites my stomach went into overdrive for the remainder of the day. Welcome to Turkey!

Ralph had a medium-sized artificial tree erected and decorated in his living room along with some Christmas tunes on the stereo, but it still didn’t feel like Christmas to me. It felt like we were arbitrarily celebrating it in the middle of September or something. Though I did get a call from my family at 6 o’clock, which brightened the day and brought some meaning and balance to everything.

We stayed at Ralph’s for quite a while, and then Ralph, who’s a country music/bluegrass/folk fanatic, started putting on concert DVDs for everyone to watch. He assumes everyone must love that sort of music, and he’s always shocked when one of us aren’t completely versed in the catalogs of JJ Cale, Gram Parsons or John Prine. He turned on the concert, and he sat about 1 foot in front of the TV set, immersing himself entirely in the show. I think he would have hopped into the TV if it were feasible. He missed going to live shows, so this is all he has in Turkey. Lou, Jen, Maddy and I couldn’t take it for much longer, and eventually we all headed home.

So that was Christmas! It sort of came and went quickly and quietly, but at least I wasn’t all alone, and I did get to spend it with some warm-hearted people.