JOYEUX NOELLE!

Holidays are a funny thing...we become so used to spending certain holidays with certain people doing certain things...then, when all of these comfortable normalcy's are either taken away or left behind, we finally begin to understand how important and cherished they have always been...

2008 is the second Christmas in a row I have spent apart from my nuclear family...and the first Christmas I have spent apart from ALL family, and America...

Christmas in London has been an experience. Both in the resilience of those who have been separated from their loved ones and the effects that family and ritual have on the power that holidays hold over us.

I spent Christmas in London, UK with my friend Darleen. We are both students, living in the UK for a Master's degree, and neither of us were able to go home for the holidays. Seeing as we are close friends, both in sentiment and in proximity, we were both glad to spend time together for Christmas. Although, seeing as we did not have other friends or family to meet up with, and 90 percent of London closes down from 8 pm on December 24 until the morning of the 27th, Christmas was not exactly the foreign holiday one might expect from seeing the movies.

We spent most of the week cooking amazing food,


watching bad Brit TV and movies, lounging around talking about our friends and family, and the Holiday traditions we were missing the most...and making a special Christmas video...



Yes, this is what happens when two twenty-something females are left alone on Christmas...HAHA!

Overall, Christmas was nice, Dar and I bought each other the Twilight book...proving once again just how similar our nerdy-ness is and how well we know each other...



Hehee...yes, I have officially fallen into the Twilight mania...

Now that I'm back in Edinburgh, And the New Year is upon me, I look on this Christmas both happily and thankfully...Dar and I never seem to bore each other, and we were so lucky to have each other this year! If she or I had gone home for Christmas, or if one of us had never come here for University, it could have been a very lonely holiday! Thank goodness for our mutual love of Brit Uni!

I loved being able to talk to my extended family on my Mom's side on the 21st on Skype...



It was a lot of fun, although bittersweet because I missed seeing so many people I never get to spend time with...But that comes with the territory of growing up, I guess. We have to make the choices that in the past were either made for us or else not even choices to consider...

Sometimes growing up is hard to do...but at least it makes you appreciate what you have in your life...the people and places and traditions that were taken for granted suddenly get thrown into stark relief against the background of their absence...you realize just how special they are, and just what they actually mean to you in excruciating detail...(or maybe that's just the anthropologist over-analyzing again...)

Holidays are a funny thing...

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

<3