Frohe Weihnachten

You know what?

The whole opening of presents on Christmas Eve is a much better idea.

Went to church at 4, showed video (had trouble getting it started, but then it played just fine and people seemed to even enjoy it), sang songs, some brilliant person decided to have Kirchen Kaffee afterwards so that no one would go home, finally managed to get out of church, and came home to do the Christmas thing. There was incredibly half-hearted singing of German songs, there was reading of strange German Christmas stories and poems that no one paid attention to, and then there were presents. We are all old enough that this was very orderly, and somehow lots of fun- thanks for sending awesome toys, Mom. I am still trying to explain the concept of Silly Putty, and it is pretty much impossible. We laughed a lot and I didn't think about taking pictures- it wouldn't have captured any of the fun, anyway. Christmas is so much better when you're awake. We spent a couple of hours going through the presents and then got everything off to the side enough for the traditional Steeger Christmas Eve dinner of fondue (yum). . . once again, you just had to be there in this great community to understand why I am in such a good mood right now and why it was such a nice dinner- impossible to explain. We'd saved various packages for after dinner, and then there was lots of sitting around and talking and laughing and enjoying each other's company, basically the same as we'd been doing all along. At some point, Phillipp decided we should watch Basti's new copy of And Now for Something Completely Different (yay Monty Python!) but Basti disappeared because he wants to watch it tomorrow morning (I don't know why) and Monty Python is still awesome in German- one of the few dubbed things where you still get a sense of accents, or maybe I'm just so far into German culture that I no longer have a concept of accented English. In any case, I love Monty Python, and it is now 1 and technically actual Christmas Day, and I am going to sleep really, really well. No need to be up before the sun tomorrow- why hasn't America thought of this idea before? If Germany only had Rudolph, Christmas would be so perfect here. Who said it was bad to be away from home for the holidays?

(Apropos snow: so it snowed on Thursday, and there was still a ton of snow around yesterday. By the time we got out of church today, there was basically none to be seen. They are calling for snow again on Monday or Tuesday. So much for white Christmases.)

(Apropos Frohe Weihnachten: thanks to our video, this phrase will forever exist in my head attached to the voices of Piff and Ferdi coming from two computer animated UFOs. Apropos apropos: Germans say this all the time. Along with quasi, it falls under the category of fancy-sounding words that are going to be part of my normal vocabulary thanks to German.)