Preparing Christmas abroad

It is going to be Christmas soon now. Well, it is coming anyway, so I might as well blog about it a bit, it might cure my homesickness. You see, I will spend it here. Anyway, we will count the days of Advent in chocolate, as I bought two Advent calendars, one for my wife and one for me. Obviously, the ones I bought are the secular ones, with chocolate pieces in them. We are after all a secular, chocoholic household. When I was growing up as a Catholic child, we had a religious one at school, with images under each date and little moralistic stories linked to them. The last image was always showing the Nativity. I don't know how the religious Advent calendars are here, although I saw many. I might get tempted to buy one, out of pure curiosity and maybe nostalgia.

Dealing with my very first Christmas abroad might be difficult. My wife did this for two years in a row and I admire her for this. Christmas is such a personal holiday, with expectations that are intrinsically linked to one's culture. For me, Christmastime is snowy, abundantly so. Here in England, it rarely snows around Christmas, and not much when it does. I will be missing it dearly. There is also the real Christmas tree that I will miss, unless we decide to buy one. It will not smell the same this year, neither will it have all those decorations we spend years to gather. Ny wife and I don't have a Nativity Scene yet. Yes, I am Godless but I love a nice Nativity Scene.

And there is the food. While I will probably eat veggie turkey, it will not taste quite the same (on the plus side, it will not be as dry either). I will cope with this as much as I can: I will make some cranberry sauce, I'll try to make a Yule log, I might even try to make some meat pies, or at least buy the veggie version if I can find any (Quorn used to make something quite similar). I was surprised recently to discover in a Christmas recipe book (page 38 for the curious) I borrowed from the library a recipe of meat pies, which they call tourtière, as it is (mistakenly) called in the rest of Québec. The real thing is much different. The recipe in that book was not even authentic as a Québec meat pie, as the pork was cut in cubes (it should be minced), but it made me feel homesick all the same. These days I don't need much to feel homesick.