Our Japanese Christmas

Today I made this wreath. It is a bit rough, but I don't have the patience to spend hours on things like this.

It did cause me to think about how we've developed our own family 'traditions' that are intrinsically linked with Japan. Since we've had children (11 1/2 years) we've only spent three Christmases in Australia, all the rest have been Japanese-Christmases.

In Australia we don't have a Christmas tree amongst our possessions and precious few Christmas decorations. We've simply not been there to collect them. And when we are, we spend the whole season driving between family who live up to 10 hours away from our home base in Brisbane.

But in Japan, it is a celebration that is mostly just the five of us. On the weekend we put up our tree and unpacked all our Christmas 'stuff' - including books, videos etc. We found decorations that the boys made when they were very young.  Some of those have amazing memories, like the snowy December in Sapporo with an active 5 y.o. who had the flu and during his convalescence we made many Christmas decorations to keep him busy and inside. We found presents given to us a long time ago (that were also decorations). This wreath was amongst the spoils. 

I would never have entered into the yearly wreath-making business except for this wreath base which was given to me by my best Japanese friend. One year at my middle son's Japanese kindergarten a mum ran an all-day wreath making workshop. (All day!!!) At that time I had a toddler and it wasn't possible to attend, however my friend did and she made an extra wreath and gave it to me! So now it has a history and connects me to my friend. Somehow making a wreath like this doesn't work so well in Australia. These pine trees are everywhere here. In our last house we had our own and just trimmed them to when we needed their branches. I wondered what we'd do this year as we have none, however a neighbour down the street had their trees trimmed the other day and these cuttings were just destined for the rubbish. My husband kindly snaffled some (with permission).

These cookies were baked in the US and posted to us to decorate!

Other 'traditions' that have entered our family, but probably wouldn't have except for where we live and what we do, are:

• the receiving of parcels from Australia
• baking and decorating Christmas cookies (a US, not Australian tradition)
• hot Christmas dinner
• holidays in the mountains, including snow play
• staying home on Christmas day (not with family) but phone calls all day to our family
• making a video for our family of the year just past

And probably others that I've forgotten. 

People may think we are sad at this time, that we cannot be with family. However, after doing eight of these in Japan, it is more familiar to celebrate this way than to celebrate in t-shirts and shorts in Australia.