We wish you all, our family and friends a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
This Christmas we decided to have a real Christmas Tree rather than the artifical one we have been using for the last ten years. So as soon as they were available we headed out to get one, as Russians normally only put up trees for New Years, usually it is closer to New Years before they are avaailable, but over the last few years we have seen them being available before the western Christmas of Dec 25, so we were able to have our tree up a week before Christmas.
First we celebrate Christmas, Faroee's style on the 24th with roast duck (sorry no photo of the duck) and all the ususlly delicious trimmings that go with it, stuffing, sweet roasted potatos, mashed potatoes, veggies and a nice sauce. Then after dinner we will sit and open presents and later have dessert. This day we usually have as a family day by ourselves.
On the 25th in the morning we celabrated the birth of our Saviour with our friends in our church and then later we had some of our friends and co-worker over for christmas dinner and as is becoming our tradition we had a leg of roast lamb, roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, veggies and again a nice sauce. And of course mint sauce for the Lamb. After dinner we exchanges some small gifts and then had a time where we sang some christmas corals together before having dessert.
Altogether as a family and with friends we had a wonderful Christmas, but...
Christmas is not just about presents and food, christmas is about Jesus Christ coming to this world as a little baby born in a stable in the town of Bethlehem. He came not just to be admired as a new born baby, he came to change the world and to give us the oppertunity to enjoy fellowship with our God and creater. We celabrate Christmas not just because he came, not just because we get presents or enjoy nice food and time with family and friends, we celebrate Christmas because of the life we have with our havenly Father through that baby that was born and who became our Saviour.