Christmas Spirit

In Day-To-Day on 31 December 2009 tagged baking, China, christmas, cookies, home alone 2, settlers with

Christmas this year started off with the most authentic White Elephant I have ever played. It was straight up things from our places that we didn’t want. I decided to give away the polo I received last Christmas in Thailand from Ajan Jurassic, but I was nice and included a chopstick set, which also was from Thailand. Ironically, the gift that I ended up with was a stuffed elephant…from Thailand.

This was the best gift of the night. For those that lived in China, you know what this is.

This was the worst… I can only describe this as a two-headed toothbrush that grew a pair.

Christmas in China is really subdued compared to the rest of the world. It’s not really a big deal here. I mean, I gotta give them some credit for trying. For example, the mall nearby our home put up decorations and had a theme for the month called Cookie Christmas. Unfortunately, there was a typo, and all the signs in the mall now say, “Cockie Christmas”. FAIL. So, basically, there is no “Christmas spirit” up in this place. This is a stark contrast to my usual Christmases spent in the US where I can even smell Christmas spirit. Yes, it really does have a smell.

So what do you do about it? Well, if the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain. We created our own Christmas spirit, and the two ingredients to this equation are baking sweets and Home Alone 2 on repeat. Christmas Eve was well spent, and with a huge help from our friend, Sue, we baked sugar cookies, chocolate almond oatmeal cookies, Russian tea cookies, blueberry shortbread cookies and created a gingerbread house. That place was so full of Christmas spirit that Santa would’ve crapped his pants if he walked in.

Chocolate almond oatmeal cookies.

Really in the Christmas mood.

Building the gingerbread house. We were going more for realism than storybook, so no need for gumdrops and silly things like that.

Our finished product. There’s a background story. There was a severe snowstorm and this photo was taken right after the gingerbread family living here was evacuated, abandoning all they had known and built during their lives. Our gingerbread house is no laughing matter.