Christmas Letter

Flamenco Beach (Playa Flamenco)
Culebra, Spanish Virgin Islands

Dec. 22, 2008

Merry Christmas!

I feel almost apologetic that as I am writing on this balmy evening, with the stars beaming overhead and the cicadas and the sea singing of Christmas in the background, it is a snowy -30 degrees in Edmonton. Although a small part of me longs for the coziness of a fire crackling on a frosty evening, the other part of me is thinking that the weather I am enjoying is much more in keeping with what Mary and Joseph endured as they trekked through the desert on a hot and sweaty donkey. Thankfully for us, we really don't have too much 'hot and sweaty' -- in the Puerto Rican summer, we would be dealing with almost 40 degrees C, but right now we average about 28, which is just about perfect.

It's been an unusual year. I am casting back to try and remember last Christmas, and my memories are of carolling in the snow and then the happy faces of friends gathered on Boxing Day. Day-to-day life is strangely blurry. Caelan says he has almost forgotten what the cul-de-sac looks like. It's nice that the incredible stress of preparing to leave has faded, to be replaced with mental pictures of a Gaudi building in Barcelona, or the kids' faces as we approached Carcasonne, or the inside of a small church outside of Berlin, all decorated for a wedding. Even the less appealing images from the last six months -- Cachell throwing up at a bus stop the morning we first arrived in London, or Lochlan jumping back into an Italian train car to check for a book, only to have the train start to leave with him in it -- are really not a big deal on Life's stress monitor! It's really taken month's to shake off and deal with administration details from home, and in hindsight, we should probably have just sold off all our rental properties before we left, as they continue to give us long-distance headaches (there's no escape!)... and I imagine that house prices have sufficiently tumbled to a point that we'll be saddled with them for a few years to come! However, it would seem that the best way to handle this "world-wide economic crisis" that is apparently happening is with the blissful ignorance of being far away from English news-papers and world news. It's easier to sit out fears of the worst splashing on a beach than biting my nails in Edmonton!!

The best thing about having spent the last six months trotting around Europe is how multi-layered our understanding of the world is becoming. The advent of Christmas is a perfect example of this; although we didn't actually get to Turkey and the middle East where Jesus lived and taught, the story of Christ has somehow come to life for all of us. We were in the Aachen Dome in Germany and saw the casket which holds the swaddling clothes that Mary wrapped her baby in to lay him in a manger. As we clambered the towers and walls that loom over the enormous rock formations of Les Baux-de-Roche in France, we realised that Les Baux was founded by Balthazar, one of the Magi who stood in adoration over the baby Jesus and later established himself in the far-away land which would one day be France -- the heraldry of Les Baux depicts the Star of Bethlehem. And of course we are only recently departed from Rome, where Constantine adopted the teaching of Christ and catapulted his teachings to the far corners of the Empire, and where the Vatican's Basillica is built over the tomb of Jesus's friend and disciple, Peter.

On a less lofty note, the practicalities of Christmas in a very primitive campground have been interesting! We have decorated the tropical shrubs around our campsite with little red balls I brought from Venice. We have a little portable table in our tent's 'porch' (lugged with no small effort across the ocean) that I have covered with a cut-work Santa cloth bought in Gibraltor. On it are the little nutcrackers Mrs. Adolph gave me for the children before we left her in France, and the kids' three favourite little ornaments that I brought from home. Gibraltor (one of the stops of the cruise ship that brought us to the Caribbean) also provided us with a Marks and Spencers store -- yippee! -- so I have a Christmas pudding and brandy butter, and some shortbread cookies and mince tarts. Still frozen in our little styrofoam cooler is a small chicken that we will barbeque, and the tiny local grocery store has also yielded a tin of cranberries and a packet of instant stuffing. We will be able to have a Christmas feast of sorts, in between trips to the beach, which is about ten steps from our site and one of the world's "Most Beautiful". Hopefully Santa will find us here, perhaps aided by a team of dolphins; we're feeling hopeful on this subject as a number of Christmas cards from friends and family did manage to get to us here already!! (Thanks so much!) There is no English-speaking church, but we are going to a children's service tonight.

This truly is about as "far from the madding crowd" as you can get; the island of Culebra is only 3 X 7 miles, and boasts a population of 3000. This is the land of living in the slow lane -- singer Jimmy Buffet lives on Tortola, just a couple of islands over. After the insanity of normal life, the rush to get away, and then the pleasurable but exhausting overload of Europe, we are ready to live like the locals and do as little as possible for a few weeks -- then we will plan the second phase of our year away!

At home I found myself repeating the refrain -- "just give me a minute to think", and it never seemed to materialise!! The gift of time is the greatest thing our sojourn on this island is giving us, so I truly mean it when I say we will be thinking of all of you over the holidays, and wish you peace and happiness in the New Year.

With love from,

Candace, Mitch, Lochlan, Caelan and Cachell

PS: If any of you are feeling slightly bitter as you read this and then have to go out in the Arctic cold, take solace in the fact that at last count I had more than seventy sand flea bites on each leg, and I am one big itch!! Every cloud has a silver lining, and every Paradise has its biting insects!!! Have a happy day, bugs, snow, and all!