It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We haven't been feeling the Christmas spirit yet. It's green here, and warm. And it doesn't feel like Christmas. I've been wanting to make it feel more like Christmas, but Andrew has been dead set against it.

He's a firm believer in the "No Christmas Anything Until After Thanksgiving" rule.

That's a hard rule for me to follow because I didn't grow up with that rule and Thanksgiving is in October, anyway, so I was used to listening to Christmas music all through November, and sometimes before...if I felt like it.

So Rachel and I have been sneaking Christmas in.

I checked out Spot's Magical Christmas from the library (not this time but last time) and Andrew just about died when he saw it. We had broken the second NCAUAT article--thou shalt not read Christmas stories until after the turkey is digested--which is probably next to either treason or murder in his law book. In case you are wondering the first article is, "Thou shalt not listen to, nor sing, nor whistle, nor hum, nor play, nor make any allusions to or parodies of Christmas music before the last morsel of pie is eaten." Andrew is a devout NCAUAT rule follower.

A hum-bug, though, he is not! He loves Christmas and really gets into it. We have a lot of special Christmastime memories, besides, you know, Christmas. We got married on December 16th and honeymooned in Italy over Christmas that year, so obviously that takes up a huge chunk of our Christmas memories. So Christmas is always wonderful.

I love to remember the birth of the Savior. I love the smell of cinnamon and pine trees and gingerbread. I don't love the snow. I love the lights and how cheerful everyone seems. I love peace on earth, goodwill to men. I love singing Christmas songs. And I love how Christmas reminds me and Andrew how much we love each other.

But we've been missing a lot of that here. There are few Santas. There are fewer nativities. And the only lights I've seen so far were flashing a "Happy New Year" to everyone from the top of the Nile Hilton, completely missing out on the whole Christmas thing altogether. I suppose that's what happens when you live in an Islamic part of the world. *Sigh.*

Because Andrew loves Christmas so much, though, he turned on Christmas music the minute we got home from Thanksgiving dinner and started setting up the Charlie Brown Christmas tree that we purchased today for only 12 LE.

We danced around our dining room to Winter Weather by Shapiro and trimmed our puny, sad-looking tree together. We also hung up our stockings and put up a little nativity set that we brought along with us. It was fun to watch Rachel's eyes light up. Children make Christmas seem so magical. I suppose it's because they're so much closer to Heavenly Father, and are so willing to believe in happy things. If only I could mimic that look of wondering awe that Rachel put on her face when she saw what we were doing. I hope I can impress upon her the reason for the season--Santa is MIA over here so it looks rather doable to me!


And so it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, at least in our apartment.