Christmas is always bittersweet – it’s an ending and a
beginning and this year is especially difficult. By next Christmas, we’ll be
land-based, I’ll be going to school, my parents will be working, and our boat
will be gone.
This is my eighth and last Christmas on the boat and
December feels like it’s passed very quickly. We’ve visited three countries
this month alone – we left Panama on December 1st, the day my advent
calendar went up and sailed to Costa Rica. From Costa Rica we arrived in
Mexico, and we’ve been here for the past week.
I’m a person who likes traditions and adapts to new ones
rather reluctantly. Every December 1st, the hand-made advent calendar
that my godmother made goes up on the wall, and I leap into the frenzy of
Christmas baking. But sometimes it’s a bit tricky to keep to your beloved
traditions when you don’t know where you’ll be tomorrow.
When we decorate, we have to make sure that our ornaments
are placed in such a way that they don’t fall over when we’re at sea. I experiment with icings and sweets that won’t
melt when I decorate cookies, and it turns out that sticking snowflake stickers
to the windows when we’re sailing isn’t such a stellar idea. In a house, that
wouldn’t be a problem because you don’t need to see where you’re heading!
Anyways, Christmas is also never perfect, which is part of
the joy of it. You get strange local sweets in your stockings, your tortierre
plans go out the window when you can’t find ground pork, and on Christmas Eve
you end up watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special with new Australian
friends who reminisce about old Doctor Who.
You can’t find eggnog in the stores so you make your own or
try a strange local version called Rompope (it’s bright yellow, and laced with
rum). Firecrackers bought from local markets end up in stockings along with the
more traditional candy canes, and your gingerbread house collapses in a
glorious sticky pile from the humidity.
In the future, I won’t remember the bad parts of my strange
Christmases – being away from family, having no snow, missing home – I’ll
remember the strange, wonderful parts that made my Christmases so special.
I’ll remember going to sing Happy Birthday to Jesus with a
bunch of cruisers in Mexico on Christmas Eve. I’ll remember the Australian
family Christmas pageants (complete with tarty elves!). I’ll remember going to
a stranger’s house in South Africa for Christmas dinner and being immediately absorbed
by the huge extended family.
I’ll remember all the things that made my Christmases so
special and unique, and I’ll look forward to all future Christmases and the new
memories that they’ll bring.
So Merry Christmas everyone. Have a very happy day.
