many faces of Christmas

The preschool Christmas celebration included dressing up as animal characters or some other character. The the suggestion in Erik's group was to dress up as a family. Gregg was willing to be the "man in the yellow hat" for the occasion as Erik wanted to be Curious George. (mama's part was sewing a costume together from various parts from the second hand store!)

Other parents found the easier solution as we did for David in getting a quick and easy (and inexpensive!)wolf costume. David's group was to wear costumes of animals from the wild. Then the games and poems they played and said were related to the forest.

"Senelis" (or Santa) and the parents were the ones they were performing for. A few of David's group said little poems by themselves, but mostly it was a group effort. in Erik's group they prepared individual ones and Erik did a good job in Lithuanian-like others with a few prompts from the teacher. The "senelis" really has to work on those days and it is not just about hearing what children want for christmas. He leads games and listens to their poems for a good half hour! Locally children are trained that they must say their poems and be good to get their gifts.


On "Kuchios" or Christmas eve we had a very scaled down version of the traditional 12 dishes without meat. we stayed away from the traditional "silke" - herring since none of us particularly like it.



On Christmas day we had breakfast and told the Christmas story with the ceramic figures. Then we opened gifts and then headed to Silute for the church service. It turned out quite nice. The boys also participated by doing motions and attempting to sing and kids Christmas song in Lithuanianwith some young ladies who are starting to lead Sunday school. We had some refreshments after the service and the atmosphere was warm and it was just really good to be there.

Sometimes other years after coming home from Silute we were a bit sad with everyone going to families and we to a very quiet house for a few days. But this time was different of course with the boys. And after naps we also went to a gathering of people at LCC who are around for the holidays without family. That included some students from farther away like Albania, Kosovo, Africa, Kyrgystan and so on. Our boys were the only little children, but they had a good time. There was a gift exchange (white elephant style) and by the end I was able to exchange for a gift that was intended for us- Tupperware popsicle makers!