The concept of living near to where you grew up and surrounded by family is a little foreign to me. My parents did a great job of creating family traditions and we enjoyed having lots of friends over on the special days. Many activities often revolved around church functions and there are many memories there too. Even throughout college I always was able to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years around my family.
And then college ended, life began, and I couldn't always "go home" for the holidays... where ever that was. Each day is a little different now. We celebrate with different people and in different ways, we have forged out our own family traditions, but there is always the wish that things could be the way they were. It's in the memories.
Thanksgiving
This past Thanksgiving I pulled out the electric knife (so wonderful for carving a turkey, even if it only gets used once a year!) and I was immediately flooded with memories of my Grandpa. His job always seemed to be carving the turkey, or any other meat for that matter. He often put on his ichiban cook san apron to keep the juices off of his clothes. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times, but my family tells me we never really celebrated it in Japan (my Thanksgiving meal is usually what my mom made for Christmas), so many of my memories probably go back to my college and post college years when I would make the trip up to Ohio for Thanksgiving. Thinking back it was crazy to make the 10+ hour trip for such a short time, but that was life before kids. Those Thanksgiving trips hold many memories in and of themselves, but I always enjoyed our family meal, which was often at church to accomodate everyone. Grandma made the turkey and all the aunts made the sides. After eating our feast we would gather in a big circle and share things we were thankful for.
About 6 years ago we had our first sibling Thanksgiving and that is when we first attempted the feast on our own. We managed and it tasted fine and then from then on I have loved making the meal! The recipes can be found here.
Christmas
Christmas is always hard, but again, we have worked to make our own memories. Will kindly follows my family's tradition of opening presents on Christmas Eve. I really need to ask my dad and grandma why they do it in the first place. Was it so santa couldn't exist? Or so that they didn't have to wake up early Christmas morning? I don't really know, but that's what we do. We make our pizza dinner and then open presents.
The last time we were all together was 2010 in the States! Lots has changed since then!
Of course it always feels a little different then at home, when we would be out late with the Christmas Eve service at church. We would often do hand bells (think the kid color coded ones) by the train station and people would stop and watch. Then we would get home late, make our little pizzas and convince our parents that it wasn't too late and we should open presents. Then we would start with the youngest and each people would get a turn opening a present as we went through all seven people, usually more because we often would have people over who could not be with their families for Christmas. Christmas day, we opened stockings and then got ready for the Christmas feast! We would have quite a crowd over. Then we would stay up late doing an 1000 piece puzzle! oh the memories.
Christmas always seems small when we are not surrounded by lots of people, but it is nice to be able to make our own traditions and see Alex and Liam get involved in them. We bake cookies, make ornaments. I had lots of other things on our to do list this year, but the flu kind of wiped out most of those options.
New Years
Then of course New Years. New Years Eve here is not very exciting. I think since New Years is the main holiday in Japan, there is so much more going on. We would watch the singing competition on tv, and laugh at the costumes. We would go to church in the morning and enjoying an omochi feast with the others afterwards. This is certainly an area where we need to figure out some more of our own tradtions, nothing has stuck out yet. New Years was fun, but it was also a time when the spiritual needs of the Japanese people came out loud and clear. As they flocked to the shrines, bought trinkets to wish for luck and good fortune in the next year. If only they realized that there is Someone who could meet their needs and love them through whatever they face.
I am thankful for the memories, even when my family is far away. I am thankful for the new memories that we have made with our boys, and the ones we will make along the way!
