The music started Christmas Eve but stopped around 9PM. I was hoping it was just a simple party. However, 4:45 AM Christmas day the monks began testing the sound system to begin their 5 AM funeral chant. The sound system was working fine, and the volume inside our house was louder than anything we can play on our own speakers. By 5:15 AM both older kids were in our bed, as we listened to two monks chant very loudly. Merry Christmas.
We found out later that the elderly man who lived across the street from us had died four days before, and the two-day funeral process had begun. All Christmas day and the day afterwards we listened to monks chanting or gongs playing. Everything was blasted through a loud speaker. This made the Christmas atmosphere a little difficult. Apart from the soundtrack, however, everything else was perfect. Saturday morning the chanting resumed at 5AM. By 11AM I was going crazy, not so much because of the chanting and gongs, but because of its volume in our house. Saturday night Josh went to the cremation. The wealthy family paid to have a portable crematory constructed in their yard. When they began the cremation, they set off fireworks right outside our fence.
Sad to think that while we were celebrating the birth of Jesus who had come to save the world, our neighbors were spending large amounts of money for religious practices that would amount to nothing for the deceased man’s soul.
Besides our soundtrack, we had a lovely Christmas Day. While Josh and I had our morning prayer time, our kids happily played together with blocks they had received a few Christmas ago. They were so happy playing, they didn’t even ask about breakfast or presents. Our meals were: cinnamon rolls and quiche for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and a buffalo crock-pot roast for supper with Josh’s pumpkin pie. The kids also enjoyed eating their large gingerbread men.
After we acted out the Christmas story and sang carols we did some of the gifts. Our main focus with the gifts on Christmas day is the ones that the kids have picked out for other family members. It’s so fun to see how excited they get about giving gifts.
Around lunch time we visited one of our neighbors — who is also one of the pastors at our church — and took the family a whole chicken and some Christmas cookies. Later in the afternoon Becca did a Christmas play for us, and the kids opened the rest of their gifts. Their big gift to each other was bouncy reindeer. Everyone is delighted with theirs.
Josh gave me a cool gift, which he spent weeks working on. He had a local craftsman make an ancient Scandinavian chess game, called Cyning Tafl. We’ve enjoyed playing a few times and are looking forward to learning more strategies to beat each other.
