‘Adopted Holiday’

We did not celebrate Christmas when I was growing up… As some of you may know, I was born in the Republic of Georgia – not the ‘Atlanta Georgia’ as some people may think, but the small former Sovient Union republic by the Black Sea.  And in the former Communist Sovient Union religion and any types of regious holidays were not really allowed or celebrated.  But I guess people need something to celebrate so the clever Sovient citizens decided to invent another holiday to celebrate instead.  Actually, they did not really invent a brand new holiday from scratch – instead they took good old ‘New Year’ and made it grand.  That’s the holiday I grew up loving and celebrating the same way most everybody celebrates Christmas – with a delicious family meal, a tree decorated with ornaments and many presents, which were brought to us by GrandPa Frost, not Santa Clause.  New Year was and still is one of my favorite holidays of the year.

For me the more holidays the better and I gladly opened my arms to a whole lot of new holidays since I came to the US.   I love the Forth of July with the BBQs and American Flags and apple pies,  Halloween with its never ending candy and customes, Thanksgiving with its turkey and football and of course Christmas – with Santa, Christmas tree and many gifts!    So I ‘adopted’ Christmas as my own and adore everything about it: Christmas music (I listen to it non stop in the car and we have A LOT of CDs at home), wrapping presents, picking out and decorating a tree, putting lights all over the house and the front yard,  drinking eggnog, eating Williams-Somoma giant caramel apple.  Ok, maybe the last one is not a typical Christmas thing but once you try these apples you will get hooked (like I did!)  so I decided to make it one of ours:)

Since we moved to our house Victor and I started a new tradition – we have our families over for a Christmas Eve dinner and spend Christmas day just the four of us at home.  We spend time opening presents and  watching the girls play with them, eating leftovers, drinking hot cocoa with toasted marshmellows and watching ‘Love Actually‘ – my favorite Christmas movie of all times.   This year we finally had our fireplace cleaned out (it only took us close to 2 years to do that!) so an added bonus  this Christmas was a real working fireplace.  It was such a relaxing and cozy Christmas – one of my favorites ever!