Christmas or "New Years" is coming in Skopje
Before coming to Macedonia, I assumed that Christmas here was December 25th like many countries in Europe. I knew Macedonia was mainly an Eastern Orthodox country, but I did not know what exactly this meant. Little did I know that Macedonia celebrates Christmas on January 7, a whole 13 days after our "Catholic Christmas" as it's referred to here. The majority of the Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar, created under the reign of Julius Caesar in 45 BC, and have not adopted the Gregorian calendar, proposed by Latin Pope Gregory of Rome in 1582. There is a 13 day difference between these two calendars.
December 25 on the Julian calendar actually falls on January 7 on the Gregorian calendar. They even have "Old New Year" which they have a small celebration on January 14. It is the start of the new year on the Julian calendar. Many people today have adopted the tradition to celebrate new year on the Gregorian calendar. Okay enough of the history lesson.
Some of the crafts my students made for the Pazar
Students at the Pazar
The only sweet at the Pazar and it tasted like a chocolate rice krispie treat, it was delicious!
This Christmas was harder in more ways then I expected. Leading up to Christmas, I was having trouble sleeping and my stomach was in knots. My mind kept thinking of the memories I would be missing and the family I wouldn't be around. As much as I wanted to live in the moment, my heart was back in Elverson.
Christmas Eve was a much anticipated day for the students here because they had been working for weeks on homemade cards, snowmen and many other crafts to sell at the "Pazar." There were tables set up in the school yard for each class and the students sold their homemade crafts to raise money for the school. This was the first year they had the Pazar during Christmas time. There was one for Easter this year and the school used the money raised to buy new curtains for all of the classrooms. Although they ran out of money for curtain rods and had to use string to hold up the curtains! I also gave a presentation on Christmas in America full of many photos and vocabulary and the students loved this! Of course I even put Riley in the slideshow.
After the Pazar, there was a show that involved singing and dancing. I had been rehearsing with some of the English students "Jingle Bell Rock" and they sang this in front of everyone. I was so proud of them! All of the parents came to watch the show and many students were dressed in red dresses and wore Christmas hats. A few students played instruments and some sang traditional Macedonian songs.
On Christmas day, I went to school and had 4 English classes. My students and I tracked Santa on the online Santa tracker since he was still delivering presents back in the states with the time change. We saw him in Arizona and later in Alaska! I also showed the students videos of some light shows on houses in America (the students were very concerned about it being a fire hazard!). After school, there was a small play put on in the local theatre for the students. This was just plain creepy, especially the costumes and my counterpart couldn't even understand the story line. Hopefully the kids enjoyed it. After the play, we went to the town square where a stage was assembled. There were students singing on the stage and a bag full of treats was handed out to each of the students in grades 1-5. I was excited that this tradition fell on our actual Christmas because it made the day seem special. The fellow volunteer in my town, Jasmine, came over on Christmas Eve to eat the cheesecake we made the previous day. It was delicious. We had to improvise with some of the ingredients but when in Macedonia, you do what you can! On Sunday I made my first homemade stromboli, completely from scratch, even the dough. It was so much work but was so delicious. I now appreciate homemade food so much more from having to make everything from scratch. I saved half of the dough and ingredients and made a second stromboli for Christmas.
The cheesecake Jasmine and I made with cherries
My first stromboli, it may not My 2nd stromboli on Christmas
be beautiful but it was delicious
Some pictures from the play at the theatre
The Santa suit was pretty funny looking
However, there sure are some crazy situations that happened in the school that day. On Christmas, the youngest students (1st grade as it is called here) were told to come in at 9 am instead of 7:30 am. There were 6 kids that forgot about this and they were in their classroom alone for 1 1/2 hours until my teacher found them in the classroom. Nobody realized they were there. Then my director decided to hold a meeting in the middle of classes and all of the teachers were in the teachers lounge and all of the students were left unattended. This completely shocked me. I knew this would need happen back home because there are too many risks!
Look at how many parents and family members came!
Students singing a traditional song with violins
My students singing Jingle Bell Rock
My students wrote letters to Santa Claus and some of the things they put on their lists included cow bells (for the Old New Year celebrations with costumes), new dresses and high heels and even iPhones.
My students writing letters to Santa, they even have a Christmas tree in the back of the classroom
Helping the students write their letters to Santa
Once home, I was able to Skype my family and we all opened presents together. My parents are so incredibly thoughtful and even sent me wrapped gifts to open and a Christmas stocking. My Dutch family friends also sent me a present to open. I was even able to Skype my family while they ate Christmas breakfast and it looked so tempting. I talked to my grandparents and later on Skyped my whole family when they came over to my house for Christmas dinner. In all honestly, the day was very emotional and full of a lot of tears. More than anything I wanted to be snuggled up on the couch with my family but I made it through the day and was able to reflect on the positive events of the day. Once I am finished my service here, I know that the holidays spent with my family will be cherished in every way after the time apart.
My students at the show, some pictures of Christmas back home to bring back memories and then my pile of gifts and my stocking
This past weekend, I went to my training community, Veles, and had a Christmas party with some fellow volunteers. We even had a white elephant gift exchange! We watched movies, played board games, cooked meals together and drank hot chocolate. I also had ice cream for the first time in 4 months. If you know me, this is HUGE. Although it wasn't as good as I expected, it was still satisfying. It was so nice to be around fellow Americans because we could all share in missing home for the holidays and it sure helped cheer me up. I even visited my old host family on Sunday and they made me lunch. It was really special, I miss them so much!
Ice cream!
Now comes the confusing part about Christmas in Macedonia that I wonder if I will ever understand. Here everything related to Christmas is for "New Years or "Нова година" as it's called here. So yes the Christmas tree, lights, presents and Christmas cards are all for New Years. People buy brand new dresses, get their nails done and have new hairstyles. There are big cocktail parties, people go to restaurants or host big parties. I have never seen so much excitement from so many people for New Years. I asked each of my classes if they know why we celebrate Christmas and their response "for the New Year." My heart was crushed and I explained that we celebrate the birth of Christ. There were crickets with this response. It seems that the actual Christmas day is forgotten about and New Years receives all of the attention. It's all anyone seems to talk about here. This definitely made Christmas harder with it not even being important in general here but I know that Christmas is in my heart no matter where I am. I am so thankful to have a family back home who made the day special for me as much as they could. I look forward to seeing what New Years is all about as well as observing their Christmas celebrations on January 7th here.
Found a nativity scene in my town, the one and only one and it made me smile
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