So Halloween just passed. Not one trick or treater knocked on our gate. In fact the whole day passed before I realized it was Halloween. They don't celebrate Halloween here in Uganda. They don't celebrate a lot of the holidays I grew up with. Halloween especially because they have real witches here so no need to dress up. I have to admit there was a brief moment of wistful nastalgia thinking about the leaves falling and kids reveling in fantasy and sugar induced comas. This morning I saw a white girl on the back of a motorcycle taxi with remnants of her Halloween costume still painted on her face. Otherwise it was just another day.
Thanksgiving is next on the American holiday horizon. Our old intern Kostya is thinking he may be back here in time to celebrate the day with us even though he is from Ukraine and had no idea what Thanksgiving was. I have no idea what we will do or if we will celebrate it at all. The only turkeys I see are gross rancid looking birds scaveging on the streets. It doesn't really inspire me to cook a juicy Thanksgiving meal. This year it may be matooke and beans in place of mashed potatoes and gravy.
And of course the big one...Christmas. How in the world do you celebrate Christmas in 90 degree weather? (I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and more recently spent eight years in Montana so I'm used to cold weather and usually a white Christmas.) Honestly I get depressed thinking about the rest of my family triming the tree with our childhood ornaments and planning feasts and buying stocking stuffers. For the last few years Dan and I have both tried to make the focus of Christmas about Jesus and not presents. But still...the traditions we grow up with are hard to just let go of. I have none of my Christmas decorations, no nativity scene, no Jewel Christmas album. So this year maybe just maybe it really will be about Jesus and not the STUFF or TRADITIONS that consume us each year at the holidays.
Dan and I decided that there is no way to fabricate a Montana Christmas here so we may as well do something radically different. This year our plan is to buy as much food as we can, cook all day and then open our gates on Christmas Eve and welcome the neighborhood for a meal. I have considered setting up the projector on our newly heightened compound wall and playing a Christmas movie too. It will be a very different holiday then we are used to but I do see it as an opportunity to remind our neighborhood of the HOPE that came to earth when Christ was born. No one else in our neighborhood will have a decorated tree or stockings hung on the mantle. No one else will spend countless hours making cookies and peanut butter balls. No one else on our street will take a color coordinated family picture to send out on Christmas cards. Christmas will most likely be just another day for the people in our neighborhood. It may be more than just another day for us but this year we will begin a new tradition for the Morris family.
This will be the first time in 31 years that I haven't seen my parent's smiling faces on Christmas morning and been greeted with a stocking full of treats. This may be the first Thanksgiving in my history that we don't dine on turkey and mashed potatoes. But we are learing how to adjust. We are learning that there is so much more than just traditions. On Thanksgiving we will be thankful for all that God has done in the last year. On Christmas we will serve our community with a meal and a reminder of the promise of HOPE. It will be different and it will be strange but I hope it will be wonderful.
We miss you all and wish we could be part of all the holiday festivities of our native land but for now we learn to celebrate wherever we are! Love you all!
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