Maybe you were reading my previous posts so I’m going to tell you the end of this story and I couldn’t find Santa Claus or his star reindeer Rudolph, although I think I was never that close to doing so 🙂

However, I received a wonderful birthday and Christmas gift that was a visit from my daughters after almost a year of not seeing us. So sadly Santa and her boys took a backseat 😉

For the three of us, Christmas in winter was a novelty, we let ourselves be surprised by all the rituals and the truth is that we had a lot of fun.

One of the main ones was the search for a real tree, honestly the idea of cutting one for that purpose gave us some concern but we accepted the rules. We chose a beautiful one and something very pleasant is the aroma that was when entering the living room where we put it together. My promise is to keep it with its decorations and put water on it until its leaves begin to fall even if this is in August 🙂

Another big difference was the time to receive our gifts. The custom, at least in Argentina, is that at minute zero on the 25th the toast is made and gifts are opened. Not here, the gifts are also opened on the 25th but after breakfast, if we were anxious until that moment, I don’t even want to think about the families with children who want to open those tempting gifts under the tree.

Something that was also very funny and surprising was the amount of songs dedicated to Christmas that are in the market. Our favorite was: Let it snow, a phrase we use a lot 🙂 Barnaby also played various songs on the piano for the occasion and that was wonderful.

Other rituals were the ugly sweaters, something unthinkable on hot Christmas in the southern hemisphere 🙂 and the other was the preparation of cookies for the neighbors.

We learned after Christmas that something usual is to go sing in front of the neighbors’ houses. I think it was fortunate that we did not know in time because we probably would have gone for songs 🙂 . I am glad to continue maintaining a good image in the neighborhood 😉 

Anyway it was a dreamed Christmas, this time far from the ocean in Valeria del Mar, but again the four of us together.