Kiwi Khristmas

Khristmas, down under, arrives at the beginning of summer. Konsequently, Khristmas is celebrated a bit differently here. For example, the sun sets only around 9 p.m., so Kiwis don’t bother setting up outdoor lights. It is even hard to enjoy the lights on the Christmas tree. (O.K., we’ll stop with the “K” thing.) Even Santa is in a different mood down under - a local children’s book depicts Santa dressed in shorts drinking a beer and eating (of course) sausages rather than a big red suit, hot chocolate and cookies. And, instead of greeting children at stores before Christmas, Santa arrives at Puhoi one week before Christmas on top of a red fire truck to give out one early gift. Guess we just need to look at things a little differently this season---with our rose-colored sunglasses on.

Gerard’s mother Gabriella and her husband Mike arrived two days before Christmas for a two-week visit. On Christmas Eve, our old neighbors from North Carolina, Anne, Ron, Michael and Katie, came to Puhoi. We spent Christmas Eve hiking in Wenderholm Regional Park on a lovely afternoon. We had a delightful evening together, including a meal of pork tenderloin and pork sausages. Christmas morning was lots of fun with heaps of petite New Zealand souvenirs under the three-foot tall artificial tree. (One of our fun activities in December was making Christmas ornaments from sticks, yarn, pasta, and flax - Quentin made a very nice "angel fish" from flax.) We went to Muriwai in the afternoon to see the gannets with the new babies. Unfortunately, we were there only twenty minutes before the skies opened up. We were drenched by the time we got back to the cars, so we headed back to Puhoi for a quiet rest of the day. That evening we grilled some chicken and tried some chicken sausages, which we all decided are our favorite kind.