Not just far from the original family units, which can be hard for many people to not be "home" for Christmas, but far from any semblance of a First World Christmas, things this year have been a little different than we're used to. (See A Presumed History of Christmas in Papua New Guinea.)
We got our tree, purchased for us by my mother, while we were still in the Village Living stage of POC. And I'm so glad we did. There were a mere 6 trees to choose from and, when we returned from the village, only a bright gold tree with fiber optic led lights in garish colors was left. My dear "sister" purchased that tree. A couple weeks later, another store got in a shipment, but that's nothing you can count on here.
I decked the tree with tiny blue ornaments I found in a store that caters to American's, frail and ridiculously cheap snowflakes, and my icicle ornaments. Afterwards my sparse tree couldn't handle another DIY craft without being overwhelmed. Except for the tree topper that still needed to be found.
The rest of the house was decked in tinsel garland of varying qualities and DIY décor crafts.
A little wacky, maybe even a little tacky. But that's life in PNG.
And to celebrate that (because if you don't laugh about it, you'll cry about it), we had a Wacky Tacky Christmas Party. A progressive dinner brought us from house to house to ooh and aww over the fine assortment of odds and ends that had been combined into our Christmas décor.
The next day, I coordinated a cookie exchange. I first went to one 2 years ago, hosted by Brooke, a woman in my home group, and it was delicious and so much fun. So everyone brought a couple dozen cookies and there was much joy in the sampling, tasting, and voting, with Christmas mugs filled with candies for the three winners of Most Delicious, Most Creative, and Most Christmas-y cookies.
Christmas Eve, the Branch had a feast. Chicken, yummy sides, scrumptious desserts, followed by a White Elephant and singing Christmas Carols. It was miserably hot and humid until the clouds broke and the rains came, the mosquitos were out in a fury, and the electricity was out for most of the evening, but the food and the company was excellent.
Christmas Day, to my surprise, James slept in until 6 am! We had a lovely morning opening presents. At 9, we headed over to my sister's house for her traditional family breakfast. (We had been adopted in at POC.) And enjoyed a kulau, or a green coconut, with a delicious water that almost wishes it was carbonated. Noon, most of the Branch was by the pool. And at 5, we headed back over to Lisa's for burgers on the grill, which everyone was invited to.
Jacob's tradition was Christmas gumbo, which we didn't have on Christmas Day as our meals were already covered for the day, but we did have later with a Papuan twist: crocodile instead of chicken.
It was a good Christmas. And while it wasn't the same by any means, it was a lot better than it could have been without the love and company of our family away from family and our Branch as a whole.
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