A turbanned santa

Each one of us found something under our Norfolk pine Christmas tree – Axel found a carpet he had been admiring at Wahid’s some weeks ago. Santa, helped by Wahid’s amazing memory, was able to find it between the 1000s of carpets heaped in enormous piles in Wahid’s shop. Steve was a co-conspirator and smuggled the carpet into our house.

The other Santa did not make it back in time to get the real object of desire and disclosed it in a card. A picture of my present was hanging in the Christmas tree. It is a traditional cradle that has been described to me but I cannot quite imagine what it is like. Not that we are expecting a baby here – Axel picked it for its extraordinary craftwork.

We cooked the winterfare and deserts for our dual hemisphere Christmas meal until it was time to leave. We dressed Axel up as an Afghan santa: a red turban (the guard helped him to wind my red scarf around his head), white cotton retrieved from pill containers served as beard and mustache, tied around his ears and neck with knitting yarn completed the set. Our Afghan staff looked on in wonder.

At Chris’ and David’s the cook was busy puttering in the kitchen where a large turkey was cooking, stuffed with pistachios, almonds, and raisins. We added our mashed potatoes, carrots and peas while our friend Steve from the consulate brought the necessary grape and hop based beverages to complete the meal.

We guessed our places at the table by looking at the contents of Christmas stockings. Mine was full of Dutch products, cheese, Douwe Egbert’s coffee and Axel had American stuff in his stocking. The men donned their Rudolph antlers, red blinking noses, while the women had flashing snowmen and christmas trees in their ears. We pulled at crackers and made wishes while little Kate checked all wrapped gifts for her name.

I gave her a beginner’s set of knitting needles with some red yarn but she was soon bored with the knitting lessons. Until she is ready for knitting the needles can be used as chopsticks.

Back home we opened the many electronic Christmas cards we received, each one taking a long time to download, and by mistake watched a movie about a family that didn’t get to celebrate Christmas together that left us depressed. We decided that this was the last time we celebrated Christmas without our kids – it’s no fun this way.