A World of Christmases

Posted by: Drew Bury, Management Officer

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Every holiday season I find myself struggling to recreate the family traditions with which I grew up.  For the better part of the last eight years, I succumbed to my laziness and Christmas entailed drinking a beer and watching television.  That has drastically changed since I got married.  The traditions previously swept under the rug quickly resurfaced, and instead of laziness, I found myself hauling a 10 foot Christmas tree up four flights of stairs and spending untold hours at Epicenter picking out Christmas tree decorations. Resting after I learned that the tree I had procured was too tall for my apartment’s ceilings, I started reflecting on my earlier Christmases, and how they might change now that I have my own family.

Like most families in the United States, the Christmas season starts once Thanksgiving ends.  All of a sudden, vendors line the streets offering Douglas firs, Virginia pines, and blue spruces and families with eager young children search for the perfect tree.  Once at home, the tree is decorated in lights and ornaments; Christmas villages, nutcrackers, caroling figurines, and Santas adorn every inch of available space; and the scent of cinnamon and clove abound.  All of this feeds the anticipation.  Children open advent calendars, systematically counting down the days until Santa arrives, until finally it’s Christmas Eve.

Fur-tree market in Seattle, USA.

In our family, each child was afforded the luxury of opening one decoratively wrapped gift on Christmas Eve, and was then sent away to a labored sleep.  My brother and I swore that we would remain awake—a task that our excitement facilitated; but eventually we capitulated, awakened from our slumber by a doting parent, informing us that Santa had, indeed, visited our house and that presents await.  We would then run down to the living room with its lit up tree, decoratively wrapped gifts, nutcrackers, Christmas villages, and caroling figurines to find that something new had arrived—unwrapped gifts.  For our family, gifts under the tree that weren’t wrapped were those that Santa brought; a sign that we had been good children for the past year.

A modern Christmas Village

My wife is from Austria.  Her traditions vary greatly from my own.  Instead of setting up a tree in November, their Tannenbaums aren’t erected until a couple of days before Christmas.  Their version of Santa enters the scene in early December as St. Nicolas and his counterpart Krampus, a devilish creature that scares children and steals their toys replacing them with coal and screws.  For Christmas, the family doesn’t work together to decorate the house, but rather an angel known as the Christkind decorates and fills the house with Christmas cheer while the children are out for a walk.  They return to find a complete transformation.  The tree is decorated, gifts magically appear, and if lucky, a lock of the angel’s hair can be found near the windowsill from which the Christkind fled.

Christkind

In Ukraine, we are attempting to combine my wife’s Christmas traditions with my own.  When I realized that my children will grow up accustomed to different Christmas traditions, I started contemplating what factors went into creating the American Christmas.  The United States is a land of immigrants, each of whom contributed their own traditions to create the American Christmas as we know it today.  I’m proud of that, and am happy to see that within the American Christmas are traces of my wife’s Austrian traditions, my mother’s parents’ British traditions, and my father’s parents’ Polish and Slovak traditions.  I’m also happy to know that my family will be continuing that custom.  Another inheritance we’ve picked up since living in Ukraine: carved wood Santas.  You’ll find those next to the nutcrackers, Christmas Villages, and caroling figurines.

Carved Santas, Santa Wood Carvings

 

Winter Solstice

Posted by: Llywelyn Graeme, Executive Assistant

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Yule Tree

Of all the holidays in the Wiccan or Pagan calendar, the Winter Solstice is my favorite. Well, after Halloween of course. Everyone loves Halloween. But the Winter Solstice marks the end of the suns retreat from the sky. It renews the Goddess’s promise that the sun will return and that summer is at last on its way. The Dark King passes the veil and the young child of the sun is born this night.

Holly with red berries

I mark the day by eating (of course) cookies in the shape of the sun, spending time with family and close friends and a small ceremony. I always try to have a gaudily wreathed tree covered in stars and tinsel and (when it is safe to do so) candles in the living room. My family (on my Father’s side) came from Denmark in the 19^th century and there the tradition of the Solstice tree dates back three or four millennia, our Christmas tree growing up was always very Pagan! One of the good things about living in Ukraine is that mistletoe is everywhere. When I want to decorate with it in the United States I have to have it imported at great cost from Europe. Here it is everywhere! I also usually have holly branches, thick with blood red berries, about.

In Seattle, where I have lived most of my life, we rarely have snow in the winter. That is another great thing about living in Ukraine. While it is still hard to get about in the ice and snow, it is wonderful to look out the window and see a lustrous deep blanket of snow turning the city into a fairyland on the longest night of the year.

The other good thing about the Winter Solstice is that my wife also celebrates Christmas, and in fact the Solstice is also our wedding anniversary! So this is a time of many great celebrations for me, and that is the best way to mark having a wonderful life, reflecting on the past year, sharing gifts and good times with friends and looking forward to the coming days. I hope you all have a safe and divine Solstice, Blessed Be!

 

Snow has landed!

Posted by: Llywelyn Graeme, Ambassador’s Executive Assistant

Shevchenko Park covered in snow

We had the first snowfall of the year this week and it reminded me how lovely Kyiv is in the winter. The first winter I was here we had a major wet snowfall that caught everyone off guard. It was my favorite kind of snow, very packable to make snowmen and easily to shovel. One of the things I like best about Ukraine is we always seem to have a white Christmas. In my home town (outside Seattle, Washington in the Pacific Northwest) it snows only three or four times a year outside the mountains, and it usually melts in two or three days. When it does snow it is always wet and thick. Every few years a storm will appear seemingly out of nowhere to drop anywhere from 5 to 15 centimeters of dense “accumulation.” Cars will be stuck on bridges and freeways overnight and run out of gas.

Different parts of the United States react very differently to snow. One of the first things I noticed when I was hired by the State Department and sent to Washington, D.C. for training was that all of the cars were fairly new. On the West Coast (California, Oregon and Washington) you will often see cars on the road dating back to the 1960’s. Volkswagen beetles, Oldsmobile 88s, Chevy pickup trucks and convertibles of all kinds.

Snow chains

East of the Rocky Mountains you just don’t see that variety and age and I wondered why for some time until my first East Coast snow storm. Then I saw dump trucks everywhere covering the roads with a salt and chemical mixture. Cities there spray thousands of tons of salt on the roads every year and this causes the bottoms of the cars to, over many years, rust away. Since the snow so rarely sticks for more than a few days on the West coast, people just normally stay home and roads are covered with sand, if anything. Seattle and the surrounding areas are also extremely hilly, so any snowfall of more than 2 centimeters and many parts of the city are impassable for anyone without chains on their car (and sometimes even with chains they are treacherous!) In fact, schools and most businesses close when there is that much snow. It happens so infrequently, we just don’t remember how to drive in it.

 

Holiday Cheer All Year Round

Posted by: Joye Davis-Kirchner, Consular Officer

As the year ends and we find ourselves between Western and Eastern Christmas, it is only normal to look back at the past twelve months and take stock.  In the past year, I had the honor to work with an incredible staff of Americans and Ukrainians as the Immigrant Visa Unit Chief in the Embassy’s Consular Section.  In the job, probably the most important single thing I did was to help Ukrainian orphan children to realize their dream of having a family and to help American families in their dream of having children.  It was like Christmas all year round.

While people may disagree about many things, it’s clear that the best thing for kids without parents is to become part of a family.  It’s best if this is through domestic adoption or foster care — Ukraine has done a great job of this — but that is not always possible.  Then international adoption, especially for special needs children who would otherwise remain in orphanages, can play an important role.  We Americans highlight this by celebrating adoption as a positive way to build families each November, which is marked every year as Adoption Month in the U.S. 

During this year’s Adoption Month, Liliya Khlebnikova (our Ukrainian adoption expert) and I had the rare opportunity to represent the Embassy at the international conference “Ukraine Without Orphans” in Kyiv.  This conference brought together over 500 participants from Ukraine, the United States, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Belarus.  The theme of the very useful conference was “Touch a Child – Change the Future.”  Especially significant for me, besides having the opportunity to explain the Embassy’s role in supporting adoptions in a presentation for the participants, was to learn more about partnerships and networks serving children at risk both on the national and international levels.  I was deeply moved by the stories of older children and the children with special needs (Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc.), who had successfully found families through adoption.   

The Cornish Family

I was particularly impressed by Reece’s Rainbow.  This organization specializes in finding families for children with special needs.   Meredith and Michael Cornish, who are associated with Reece’s Rainbow, are some of the most remarkable people that I have met since arriving in Ukraine.  Meredith and Michael have six children, three – biological and three – adopted, with Down syndrome.  They are now adopting two more Ukrainian kids with Down syndrome.   In a meeting with Consular Section staff, they explained to us why families adopt children with HIV, blindness, arthrogryposis, spina bifida, fetal alcohol syndrome, or Down Syndrome.  Meredith and Michael also told us how these disabilities influence the adopted children and their new families.  

In addition to her duties at home and her work with the Reece’s Rainbow, Meredith Cornish has her own blog at http://www.mcornish.org, where she gives online advice to families who have adopted kids or have their own kids with Down syndrome.  If you want a first-hand view of special needs adoption, look no further.

Thanks to Meredith and Michael, and many other wonderful Ukrainians and Americans who work to find families for special needs orphans through international adoption, and the opportunity to facilitate their work, I felt a little bit like Santa Claus all year long.

 

One Season, Many Holidays – Religious Pluralism in the US

Posted by: Heather Fabrikant, Deputy Cultural Attaché

“We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions – bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality.” – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“For the past four decades, new immigrants have brought to the U.S. not only their dreams of freedom or economic prosperity, but their Bhagavad Gitas and Qur’ans, their images of the Bodhisattva Guan Yin and the Virgin of Guadalupe. We the people wear yarmulkes, headscarves, and turbans now. We build temples, mosques, and gurdwaras.” Diana Eck, Harvard professor, Director of The Pluralism Project

Hanukkah at White House

Growing up a child of parents of two religious backgrounds, I celebrated not one but two holidays. Being raised worshipping and learning about two separate but linked traditions may seem strange to most, but it is an increasingly frequent phenomenon in America.  A recent survey indicates that among America’s married adults, 37 percent are married to someone from a different religious affiliation. A recent example is Chelsea Clinton’s marriage to Mark Mezvisnsky in July 2010, which was officiated by both a Rabbi and Reverend. While common, there are still mixed feelings in America about interfaith marriages, like that of my parents.

Kwanzaa

As a child, my Jewish father and I would go buy a fresh pine tree at the local church bazaar. Usually before Christmas, since Jewish holidays follow the lunar Hebrew calendar, my family lit a menorah for the first of the eight nights of Hanukkah. In my predominately African American junior high school, several classmates taught me about the Kwanzaa holiday, a week-long celebration founded in 1966 to honor African-American heritage.

According to an extensive study on the religious landscape of the US, America is one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world.  The First Amendment of our Constitution prohibits the establishment of a state religion and protects each individual’s freedom to worship as he or she chooses.  Every day, Americans of a wide spectrum of religions, ethnicities and creeds interact and worship in myriad ways. 

For more information about the religious freedom in the US check out the Freedom of Faith ejournal in English and Russian. I’d love to hear what you think!

 

Favorite Christmas Movies Enrich the Holiday Season

Posted by: Daniel Cisek, Deputy Press Attaché

Americans like to watch their favorite Christmas movies year after year.  My own memories of Christmas include television shows and movies that really put me in the holiday mood.  Some are classics, others are more recent arrivals, but all of them create that special Christmas feeling.

As a child, I remember watching classic Christmas tv shows.  One of the best was A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965).  This beloved program still runs every year on American tv, and tells the story of a young boy’s attempt to rediscover the true spirit of Christmas, despite being laughed at by his friends and classmates, who only care about the gifts they’ll be getting.  The show’s music, composed by jazz musician Vince Guaraldi, is also an enduring classic.  I was listening to the soundtrack with my own family just this weekend as we hosted a holiday party.

Other great Christmas tv shows include Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), a stop-action film created with clay figures; Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966), which I greatly prefer to the recent re-make; and Frosty the Snowman (1969), the tale of a snowy fellow who comes to life one day, to the great joy of the children who made him.

It's a Wonderful Life

My favorite Christmas movie is It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), about a talented small-town boy who dreams of seeing the world, but is forced to stay in his hometown because of his sense of duty to his family and community.  In the end, after jealously watching his friend make a fortune in New York City, and after facing a severe personal crisis, he realizes he’s “the richest man in town” when everyone comes together to help him when he needs it the most.  The final scene where his family and friends sing the traditional New Year’s song “Auld Lang Syne” is one of the great moments in American film.

My other favorite Christmas movies include A Christmas Carol (1951), the best film version of the classic Charles Dickens story; Miracle on 34^th Street (1947), about a young girl’s belief that she’s found the real Santa Claus; and more recent films, like the quirky and fun A Christmas Story (1983), about a young boy and his quest for a genuine Red Ryder BB gun; Home Alone (1990), a slapstick comedy about a young boy whose parents mistakenly leave him at home during Christmas, where he must do battle with two inept burglars; and last but certainly not least, Elf (2003), a sweet and funny story about a man who thinks he’s one of Santa’s little helpers.

I’d love to hear what you think about the movies on my list, and to know what your favorite Christmas or holiday movies are – please leave a comment!