What's the deal with Christmas anyway?

Last year I needed to get some work done on my car and it just so happened that I picked it up on Christmas Eve during the day (December 24th) .

While I was waiting for my car to be brought around, 2 Omani men were talking to each other in Arabic and then they turned to me and one asked "is it a holy day for you today?"

It occured to me that like I don't really get Ramadan or Eid, they probably don't really get Christmas.

I said, "well kind of but really tomorrow is the big day."

The man asked, "what is it?"

Since I figure this is the case for a lot of Muslims (maybe, maybe not) because most Muslims are, well you know, pretty dedicated and most will not (I think) consider other religions or whatever, so I thought I'd break it down for you.

I'm not spreading Jesus propaganda or trying to convert anyone here, I'm just letting whoever wants to know what the deal with Christmas is and why there is a Christmas tree in almost every busy "Western" friendly frequented shopping place.

Here I go, keep in mind that I haven't studied the Bible (or even looked at one) since I was about 16 and this is my unresearched and unclarified version of events how I remember them, mostly through wearing sheeps costumes and standing at the back of the nativity scenes in grade school.

The story all begins with a nice young lady by the name of Mary. Mary got pregnant while still a virgin by God. (I don't think it was a sex thing.) God let her know that she was to be the mother of Christ and that a man, a carpenter in fact, called Joseph would hook her up with a wedding ring and take responsibility for her and the baby and thus save her for being stoned to death when her bump started to show.

Then Mary went to Joseph and told her what God had said and that they needed to get married. I think Joseph didn't really know what to make of the situation because he didn't know Mary, but he took her word for it, or maybe he had faith in the situation, or maybe he was just a kind man who wanted to help this lady out, or maybe he just liked Mary's style.

I think they did get married, but I couldn't say what sort of celebration they had. I wonder if they had wedding themes back then...

When it was time to have the baby they headed off to Bethlehem which is where Joseph was from because back then you had to have your baby in the fathers home town (Cush said it's because there was a census or something). For now we're saying Joseph was the father even though we all know that God is the real baby daddy.

They might have been heading to Jerusalem or somewhere interesting but maybe Mary got caught short and went into labour.

So it was on Christmas Eve, that Joseph and Mary stopped at an inn in Bethlehem and asked for a room. But there was no room at the inn. That's an important detail.

So Mary and Joseph went into the barn and made themselves comfortable and waited for the baby to come.

Meanwhile....there was a very, very bright and special star in the sky over Bethlehem that night and the 3 wise men knew that someone special was being born and so they went and followed the star and each of them brought a gift with them for the baby (Cush said they followed the star for months).

One gift was gold, another was myrrh and the last was frankenscense. These gifts would have been the equivelent to an i-phone, an x-box and a car these days, like really fantastic, amazing gifts.

So sometime on the 25th, Mary gives birth and named the baby Jesus (God might have told her to name him that). Since they're in a barn they put the baby in a manger which is what I think people used to put hay in for the animals, it's a sort of troph or something.

Why is it so important that there was no room at the inn and they put Jesus in an animal food troph? Well it shows that Christ came from a humble beginning.

So, every year we give each other gifts to celebrate Jesus' birthday and we also usually have a bit of a feast, turkey (or ham or both) usually, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and some veggies are typically on the menu.

Why do we decorate a pine tree? I don't know, because it's fun or because it's pretty (because it gives our cats something to destroy!?)? It's tradition either way, I think it's best not to question it actually.

Who is this Santa Claus guy? Well, I know this much, he's the guy who brings the presents. He lives at the North Pole (which I always took to mean he's Canadian) with Mrs. Claus (also Canadian) and his team of reindeer (Canadian obviously) who can fly. These flying reindeer are lead by Rudolph who has a red nose.

I'm not shitting you. This is seriously what the deal is.

So Santa and the reindeer fly all over the world and go down peoples chimneys and leave presents under the tree for the good children, but not the bad children, Santa always knows who's good and who's bad, in fact he makes a list about it. If there's no chimney then Santa jimmies the door or window open and gets in that way.

In return, families leave out cookies and milk for Santa to eat and drink and some carrots for the reindeer to eat.

We also tend to give to those less fortunate this time of year either through donating money to the Salvation Army, toys for children and food to the food banks so that everyone has the chance to have a good Christmas.

So that's Christmas. A lot of really doesn't have much to do with Jesus anymore for a lot of people but alternatively a lot of people do pick this as the time of year to go to church. And I do have to say that while I dislike organized religion (mostly because I think it brings out a lot of bad in people, sexism, judging and whatnot) I do like Catholic churches at Christmas.

There is usually a nativity scene (which looks like what the barn in Bethlehem would have looked like on the night Jesus was born only Mary never looks like she just had a baby, she looks very beautiful and glamerous and usually like a white woman although she obviously would not have been white, Jesus is laying in the troph all pink and glowing, the wise men are there hanging around in the background and Joseph looks dottingly down onto Jesus like a proud papa), and 4 candles that stand in a wreath called an advent wreath I think and one candle is lit for every week during December (I think), usually there are some poinsettias (red Christmas flowers, very poisonous to cats)...

Obviously when I picked up my car from the shop last year I just said something like, our guy Jesus, like your guy Mohammed was born and that's why we celebrate.

They nodded like, yeah, and I paid and went about my day.

Questions? Comments? Corrections? (Cush already told me I was wrong about a few things)

Merry Christmas everyone!

When a hangover lasts 2 days....

...you know it was a bloody good night out!

Cush and I had a really fantastic time at the Bryan Adams concert, like a really, really fantastic time.

I sang and danced and waved my Canada flag all night long.

Thankfully, things only went downhill when we got in the cab to leave, then when I got home I felt sick and spent a long time laying naked on the bathroom floor...I'll spare you all the gory details.

The next day, yesterday, I felt rotton. I spent most of the day in the bathtub reading, or on the couch watching tv.

When I came out into the tv the first time yesterday I noticed that Small Fry had seemed to attempt to climb the Christmas tree and it had toppled over and all the ornaments were scattered through out the room. Some of them broken.

I've never had such a distructive cat and the worst bit was that I felt too delicate to bend over and clean everything up.

My friend J who I had been texting with suggested I get some greasy food in me so I ordered a pizza from Papa John's, pepperoni (beef pepperoni that is), nothing fancy. The man on the phone said it would be an hour and 10 minutes. I said fine.

Can you believe the pizza took 2 HOURS?! 2 fucking hours for fucking pizza! 1 pizza.

I can't understand for the life of me how it could take so long. I literally could have walked there, ordered it, waited for it and walked home with it in less time....could have were I not so hungover, that is.

This would never happen in Canada. In fact most places in Canada have a if-you-don't-get-it-in-an-hour-it's-free policy. I can see why they don't have that here. They would be bankrupt in days.

So today I'm still taking it easy but I need to get a move on for the Christmas cookies I'm baking for our neighbours and such.

One other big piece of news is that we're giving notice on our flat today. We're moving :) Where, we have no idea! We're out of control!

If I don't get another chance to write, Merry Christmas everyone!

Touristy things

Lots of stuff has been going on lately. I've been insanely busy and often wonder how I would have time to fit in a job if I could manage to find myself one.

Last week my brother in law came for his first visit to Oman, and he really enjoyed himself.

He didn't have a lot of time to spend in Oman before we went to Dubai for 5 days for the Dubai 7's so we had to cram the-best-of-Oman-highlights-tour into 3 days.

Ok it was not possible, we did manage some stuff with the jet lag sleep ins, the Queen's visit and road closures, me having car problems and having to get it fixed again (!) and Cush being very busy at work setting us back.

Nakhal Fort unfortunatly took a whole day because, well, I got lost. I had only been to Nakhal Fort once with Cush maybe 2 years ago and all I could remember was that it was in the middle of a thousand palm trees and on a hill.

I checked out the map and saw that the way to Nakhal was to go to Barka roundabout and turn left and then just drive down that road.

I checked on the Ministry of Tourism website but there were no directions there. I checked in the Oman Residence Guide but no directions there either.

I decided that we would just head out anyway because how hard could it be to find, Nakhal Fort is huge!


Besides, the Ministry of Tourism has been adding brown signs to sides of roads advertising tourist destinations so I figured it would be no problem...so of course having my luck, it was a problem.

As we drove to Nakhal I saw a brown road sign for a fort pointing in on the right hand side. I didn't catch the name of the fort but it didn't say "Nakhal" but I figured maybe the name on the sign was the proper Arabic name. Wrong again.

We ended up at some random fort that hadn't even been restored. It was covered in lizzards and there was even a dead bird up in a tower.

I drove around for about an hour and a half before Cush texted to see how we were getting on. I texted back to say we couldn't find it, Cush texted again to say that all he remembered was that it was on the left hand side of the road.

Sure enough it was on the left side of the road, and there was no handy brown sign pointing us in the right direction.

We did our tour and my brother in law really enjoyed himself, and he didn't seem to mind that I drove us around lost for a few hours up and down the same 3 or 4 streets in the village on the other side of the road, saying over and over, "I know it's around here somewhere. There really is a fort. I've been there before!"

The next day we went to wadi Shab and the sink hole with Cush and we had a lot of fun.

For those who don't know wadi Shab is a really cool wadi that you hike up and then at the end you swim under a rock through a cave and into an cavern that is half full of water and really fun to swim in...apparently.

I'm not a fan of swimming in untreated water and creepy crawlies and stuff so I stayed out and read a book while Cush and Brother-in-law swam.

Then we went to the sink hole and had a bbq. While we were there some random guy walked up and asked us for food. It wasn't cooked yet so we said come back in 20 minutes but he just stood there.

After about 10 minutes of him just standing there he finally lost interest and went away but then he didn't back for the food we had set aside for him. So wierd.

The next day we had planned to go to the Grand Mosque (Cush and I have never been) but time got away from us and we headed off to Dubai.

In between all this we did manage to go to the souk although it was so late by the time we got there that all the shops had closed, and we did the drive from the souk around old Muscat to the Sultan's palace and then through and up to Ruwi and back.

Oman really is a neat place to take people around, I always forget that because I live here and we don't do the touristy things anymore but I always enjoy myself.

Next week is the Bryan Adams concert and I'm super excited! I seriously can't wait.

Also next week, my in laws are coming for a visit and I'm feeling a bit of stress about it to be honest. We don't necessarily get along very well so we'll see how that goes!