Since everyone else was giving Christmas reports, I thought I'd throw in my two-cents. I spent Christmas in Kilarni...I mean California. Third year in a row, and certainly not my last. It was really different than our way of celebrating but it was still fun. On Christmas Eve we ate dinner at a Spanish family's house where we ate Mexican soup called posole. I'm not sure what kind of meat was in it (luckily it wasn't cow stomach) but they just had full bones of meat sticking out of the soup bowl. I tried to politely scrape the meat off with my spoon then asked Michael's sister what I do with the bone. She said "there is so much meat left on there! I'll take it!!" She took the bone and started chowing down like it was corn on the cob. Lesson learned--it's totally okay to eat with your fingers when it comes to meat.
Michael wanted to have matching red Christmas sweaters. Cute huh?
Christmas morning I didn't get anything in my stocking. That's because they don't have stockings. And that's because they don't really know what they are. I month before I came out for the holidays I was asking Michael about their traditions and I asked about stockings. He was like "what are those?" so I tried to explain about the socks and the little presents and the oranges and chapstick, etc...still wasn't ringing any bells with him. When I got to his house later that month I saw stockings hung on the banister as decorations along with pine boughs and ornaments. I said "Michael, look. Those are stockings." to which he responded "OH you mean Christmas boots?" So in years to come, I'll open his eyes to the wonder of stockings.
Over all it was a fun holiday. It can be hard to adjust to someone else's traditions...but you all know that already since you've been married for like 29 years. I'm just learning. And you better believe I'll be learning for years.
