Christmas Time!

We celebrated Christmas a few days ago and it was amazing! Spending time with my host family and enjoying the holiday spirit was so much fun. My younger host sister and I made a gingerbread house together and we all watched so many Christmas movies together.

I will say that there are a lot of differences between Christmas in America and Christmas in Germany. First of all, Christmas here is celebrated on the 24th instead of the 25th. Also, unlike in the US where my family and I put up and decorate our tree the day after Thanksgiving, here they usually wait until a couple of days before Christmas to set up and decorate the tree. When we were opening presents, we also did something that I’ve never done before back home. We all took turns rolling a dice and we could only open a present when we rolled a 6. This slowed the present process down a little bit and made it more enjoyable.

My host family and I also went to church on Christmas night. This was one of the first times I’ve been to church on Christmas and it was really cool. We were there for about 40 minutes and we watched a Krippenspiele (Nativity play). Even though I didn’t understand all of the German, it was still interesting to watch the play.

After the Krippenspiele, we went home, ate Christmas dinner, and opened presents. Once we were done opening presents, we all sat in the living room together talking and playing around with our gifts.

Even though Christmas here is different from Christmas in the US, I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. It was such a special time with my host family and I truly enjoyed every single second of it.