Christmas Day

We had a great Christmas here yesterday. Our Christmas started Christmas Eve. Everything is closed for the holiday here starting on the 24th at 2 p.m. and continuing through the 26th. On Christmas Eve we enjoyed watching parts of familiar movies (Dennis the Menace, Sound of Music, the Muppets Christmas Carol) in Hungarian on television. Then we watched a Hungarian movie DVD that Mike received as a gift from his English/Hungarian conversation practice partner.
Christmas morning the two of us opened Christmas presents. Our family tradition is to read the Christmas story from Luke 2 before we open presents, and this year we read it in Hungarian. We relaxed and "played" with our Christmas presents, and ate a ham dinner. (Next time Nancy buys a ham, it won't be "békebeli," or "peacetime." It was what we would call old-fashioned ham and way too salty for us.) Mid-afternoon, we called two of our sons and their wives who were together for Christmas in Austin, Minnesota. We got to chat with them over the internet and saw their cute little dogs. We talked longer than we expected and so were a little late for the Christmas service at church here. The service ended with a presentation by the children-- children's Christmas programs are priceless, no matter where you are! We raced home after that and called our other son, his wife, and our grandson in Billings, Montana, again on the internet. We got to watch them open presents, and Nate was so excited, he just danced around and laughed!
We thank the Lord for a wonderful Christmas. And most of all we thank Him for His awesome gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.