The Dark Side of Christmas

My first official Christmas as an adult is over. Thank god! By the end of this long, long Christmas, I felt like I needed to write my parents a long letter of apology and thanks for all the Christmases I spent as a child (well, basically until this year).

First, some explanation about Christmas here… There are three main characters in the Christmas story:

St. Nicolaus, who visits on December 6^th and puts treats in the children’s shoes. He didn’t visit the kids at their house this year, because their mother said that they had been too bad this year. Yikes. But he visited here and they got the treats the next time they stayed with us.

Weihnachtsmann (Christmas man, a.k.a. Santa Claus). Generally he delivers the presents, but in our case, he only helps Christkind (see below), because Friederike is shitty scared of Santa Claus.

Christkind (Christ child). Basically, Christkind is a kind of angel-like creature, who decorates the tree and, in our case, delivers the presents. According to the kids, it is bad luck to see Christkind.

I told the kids about the tradition of making cookies for Santa Claus and leaving a glass of milk for him. We baked some cookies and left them on the window sill Saturday morning (Christmas celebrations start here on the 24^th) when we went to the playground and again Saturday afternoon when we went to church.

Here’s where I started feeling like an adult. As we were planning the Chirstmas weekend, Nico said, I guess we have to take them to church. The basic purpose here was to hear some Christmas songs (O Come All Ye Faithful, in German) and to see a little Nativity play. Because this was a special service just for kids, it was total chaos. You couldn’t hear the priest over all the whining, crying, shrieking kids. Plus there was one adult somewhere in the church who kept going “Shhhhhh!” really loudly at all the kids. That was the most entertaining thing for me, because it was completely ineffective and you could tell how annoyed the person was. So the kids went up to the front of the church to watch the play and we stayed in the back.

Just as the service was finishing, I snuck out the back and ran home to decorate the tree. Nico planned to walk home slowly with the kids and distract them as long as possible. Let me just tell you that decorating a Christmas tree quickly is not an easy thing to do. But I managed to get it done and then I called Nico’s cell phone to tell them that Christkind was here. They started screaming and running towards the house. Of course, I quickly emptied the milk glass, put the cookie back and opened the window (Christkind flies in through the window). The look on their faces when they came in and saw the tree, the presents and the open window were priceless. And when we showed them the empty milk glass, they were stunned. Friederike is just on the edge of not believing, but in that moment they were both true believers.

We sat down by the tree and Friederike nearly had a fit she was so excited to open her presents. But Nico had to quickly run down to the basement to leave the Santa Claus costume for his friend Tunk who would be arriving shortly. We started opening the presents and then someone rang our doorbell. Nico buzzed him in and went out into the hallway to see who it was. He quickly came back in and said, I think it’s Santa Claus, I can see his hand on the handrail, coming up the stairs (we live on the sixth floor). The girls ran to me and clung to me in a panic. Friederike was terrified. Karlotta soon grabbed my hand and asked me to go with her to look down the stairs, but I couldn’t convince Friederike and Karlotta wouldn’t go by herself. They soon hid under the couch, with Karlotta periodically sticking her head out to see if he had arrived. They were dumbfounded when he finally arrived and it was all rather awkward. Then he mentioned his Rute, which is a bundle of little sticks that Santa Claus carries for punishing the naughty kids. I guess the German Santa Claus is a little bit more old fashioned and believes in corporal punishment. Anyway, as soon as he mentioned the Rute, Friederike started crying. We were trying to get them to sing a song for him, but Friederike could not calm down. After a while, Karlotta walked over to the Christmas tree, got the drawing she had made for Santa Claus and gave it to him. Friederike eventually calmed down enough to do the same. Then he gave them each a little gift and talked to them about the importance of being a good role model for their little sisters (they have a half sister who is 1 ½).

Later on when we were talking (on speakerphone) to Nico’s mom, she said something like, “Oh, poor Tunk.” And then Friederike figured out that Tunk was Santa Claus. For the rest of the weekend, she was constantly saying, “Tunk was the Weihnachtsmann!!!!” Karlotta asked, “Do you think it was the real Tunk?”

For Better or Wurst

Nico and I are getting married! It came as a bit of a surprise, as we had both said how ambivalent we felt about getting married again. At the same time, we had admitted that although there was a part of us that didn’t really see the point of marriage, we both kind of wanted it.

So a couple weeks ago as we were walking through the Stadtpark (the Central Park of Hamburg), we were talking about our travel plans (Namibia and Botswana in March/April) and baby plans (after the trip to Africa). We agreed that we wanted to travel sooner rather than later so that we could get on with the baby-making. Nico’s sister recently told us that it would be better to go in September or October (she lived in Namibia for a while), but Nico and I both felt like we didn’t want to wait that long. On this walk, I asked him what he thought about the idea of getting married before we had a baby. He said he wouldn’t really want to have a baby without getting married. We started talking about why we wanted to get married. Then we started talking about what kind of ceremony/party we would want to have. Where it would be. When it would be. Then there was a pause in all the planning and he said, “So, is this official now? Do you want to get married?” And I said yes, and we hugged and cried and all that. Then we spent a little while looking at each other and laughing, saying how crazy it all is. Meeting in Guatemala, all of our subsequent rendez-vous, and what our lives had been like since I moved here just three months ago. We talked about how quickly it has all happened, but how strong we feel our relationship is for all that we have been through.

In the days since then, Nico has told me nearly daily how excited he is to marry me and that he doesn’t want to wait until July. We haven’t told the kids yet, because of the Christmas madness. But they have been saying since they met me that they want us to get married. Last time we played Jenga as a family, Friederike said, “You should get married because you play Jenga together so well.” Sounds reasonable to me…Just this weekend, they were talking about how they wanted us to get married so that they could throw rose petals on the aisle. Unfortunately for them, that would never happen at any wedding of mine, but nonetheless, I think they’ll be okay with our decision to get married.

Meine Lieblingswoerter

Since I finally have a reason to procrastinate (final test in German class tomorrow), I thought I would return to the blog, although most of you have probably given up on me, since I've been gone for so long...

Anyway, I have chosen as the theme for today, "Meine Lieblingswoerter" aka "My Favorite Words."

The first word is schnupfen, as in Ich habe schnupfen. Schupfen means a cold or stuffed nose. I like this word because it sounds like what it is.

The next word is schmutzig, which means dirty or soiled. I don't know whether the Yiddish word is an outgrowth of the German word or vice versa, but I've been saying schmutz for years. That's one less new vocabulary word I have to learn.

Moving right along to mist. Mist translates literally to dung or animal feces, but is used more like Americans use the word "crap." Last time we went to pick up the kids and Karlotta started making a drama, Friederike said to me "Mist, oder?" ("Crap, right?" - Germans use 'oder', which means 'or', like the French use 'n'est-ce pas?' or the Spanish use "Verdad?"). But this word makes the list because it coincides with the weather here. For a while in November we were having shitty weather (das schlechtwetter), with cold temps, fog and light rain. It was making me really grumpy. I went to the NY Times website one morning, where I have the weather location set to Hamburg. It said "Hamburg, Mist 3 degrees C." We laughed about that one for a while.

I have recently taken to reading the German-English dictionary to find funny expressions (yes, I like reading the dictionary), and my favorite one so far is "Bei dir piept's wohl." This loosely translates to "You hear peeps in your head," in other words, "you're off your rocker." I now find many opportunities to use this expression...I think Nico doesn't like it when I read the dictionary.

This weekend with the kids we went to the schwimmbad not too far from our house. The girls were super excited, although they freaked out when the waves in the wavepool started. We also had a little photo session, which they loved.

Okay, now I have to go study....