It's A Wonderful Life!

I love Christmas - I love everything about Christmas. I love Advent worship. I enjoy Christmas cookies and the smell of cinnamon and pumpkin in my house. I love that when I turn on the radio, everyone in the car knows the words to the songs. I delight in Christmas trees, McAdenville, ice skating, John 1, Luke 2, caroling, and hot chocolate. I will even admit that I love the commerciality of Christmas. I get bit by the Christmas bug every year - usually, I am infected a little earlier then the rest of the world. Well, maybe not the whole world --- Wal-Mart and I probably get bitten about the same time.

As of last week, however, I had still been waiting for Christmas to sink it's teeth into me. Looking around, I realized that the rest of the Americans were feeling the same way. So, I decided institute "Christmas Bootcamp: Get With the Program" Week. Our workout: Every night for one week, the American teachers would get together for holiday fun and a reading of Luke 2. I was going to help us find the Christmas spirit if it killed us.

Christmas bootcamp officially began on Sunday, so Heidi and I began preparing on Saturday. Because Christmas trees (and wreaths and ornaments and other assorted decorations) are in short supply in Tisovec, we spent the day making our own. I made a trip to a knick knack store and bought a stack of construction paper (20 pages is all the store had). On the way out of the store, I ran into Mark (one of the American teachers). Excitedly, I thrust the paper at him asking, "Mark, do you know what this is?!" He looked at the paper and back up at me and said, "It's paper." "No, I told him... you've got to have some vision." He narrowed his eyes, "A christmas tree?" he answered. OF COURSE!

Here is our Christmas tree (some assembly required).









On Heidi's run, she found good greenery and some pretty berries. We made an Advent wreath using four candles and wine corks.



Heidi also made a nativity scene out of toilet paper rolls and construction paper. Don't tell Mom (because she would be appalled) but, in keeping with the toilet theme, Jesus is made out of toilet paper.





On Sunday morning, Heidi and went to the store and bought everything we would need to make gingerbread cookies. We also got the ingredients for hot chocolate and good Slovak spiced wine. To carefully guard our holiday surprise, we put placed a sign on the door of our apartment:

(Pozor = "Careful!" or "Danger!" and D'akujeme = "We thank you.")


Before everyone arrived we changed our sign to read:
"Welcome to Christmas Town, USA" (except we crossed out USA)and wrote "Slovakia"

When we invited everyone to come for Christmas, we asked each teacher to bring three homemade ornaments to use for decorating our tree. I LOVE that each person spent time putting his or her own "touch" on the ornaments.

Here is our table of ornaments.



Here we are trimming the tree.









We made Christmas cookies!







Then, we decided to take "family pictures" in front of the tree.






We watched Merry Christmas Charlie Brown and read the Christmas story together.

And because no Christmas could be complete without mistletoe, I hung some from our ceiling. He is Eric... waiting... under the mistletoe.



Here is Becky... (although this is probably not what Eric had in mind)



It's safe to say that it's Christmastime in T-town.