Sretan Božić: Merry Christmas

My first Christmas away from my family. A strange concept in theory, but in actuality, a very Merry Christmas.

On Christmas Eve day, my host family spent most of the day in the kitchen. My host sister Sara and I spent the morning making gingerbread cookies. Croatians do not mess around with their Christmas cookies. By the end of the whole cookie making process, we had about five different types of professional looking "cakes" as the Croatian word for cookies is keksi.

Christmas Eve day was also Aja's 80th Birthday. I asked him what he wanted for his Birthday, and he said, "just a kiss."

The traditional Christmas Eve dinner is meant to be rather bland and tasteless, since it is the night before the giant Christmas feast. Most people have fish and bean salad. The fish we had had been alive about three hours before we ate it, straight from Croatia's coast. Janet told me some years they have gotten it fresh and let the fish swim around in the bathtub for a few hours before dinner...

It snowed all day on Christmas Eve, and my neighborhood looked like something out of a winter wonderland scene, all quiet and still. Tomislav Janet and I went to Sloboština, the closest neighborhood with a church, and attended the 8 o'clock mass.

On Christmas morning, I was awoken at 8 (much to my chagrin) by Beka and Sara standing over my bed jumping up and down, shouting at me to "GET UP KELSEY, IT'S CHRISTMAS!" My Mom sent me my stocking from home, and there is was on the end of my bed. Since Janet is English, and Tomislav Croatian, the Tuškans do a combination of English and Croatian traditions, the stockings obviously being English. Regardless, having a stocking made me feel even more at home. We went downstairs and ripped open the presents in a blur of chaos and tearing paper. It was all over in about ten minutes. It was lovely to celebrate Christmas with someone who still believes in Santa. (Beka, age 9)

Later we ate breakfast, and Tomislav read the story of the birth of Jesus from the Bible. Around 2 we had a giant lunch. Croatians traditionally eat Turkey on Christmas Day-because a Turkey kicks his feet up backwards, signifying the end of the current year, and on New Year's the food is pig, because pig's snuffle forwards, signifying the New Year. I have to say I am not much looking forward to the entire suckling pig to be displayed on the table...

We played Croatian pictionary in the afternoon, the only word I knew being belly-button...with some luck, I will know more by next year!

Sretan Božić i Nova Godina.