Christmas Cocktail in the Holy Land

I must apologize to all of you who checked back on Sunday to see if our Christmas Cocktail Party was a flop...and shame on you for thinking I would let a party flop!  It was awesome!  People were SO happy to have a Christmas event to mark the season and a reason to dress up and time to hang out with friends!  As surprising at it is...there is no Christmas in the Holy Land. At least not as we know it and not in the place where we can go.  Throughout Palestine there are Christmas tree lightings and peace choirs singing - but not here in Israel.  Anyway... enough of that sad story - on to the spectacular Christmas Cocktail!

The duty free alcohol for the party showed up, as predicted, the day after the party.  We ran to a local store and picked up the necessities to make our creative cocktails with festive names like "Father Christmas" (Bourbon, orange, bitters and powdered sugar) and "Holiday Cheer" (A fruity martini). And wow did our friends ever take the cocktail part seriously!  I set out little red and green notecards for everyone to write their cocktail recipe on...and the bar was littered with these cards!  The drinks were delicious, all but 4 of my cookies were eaten, the appetizers brought by friends were devoured! And most of all, people LOVED the Christmas decorations in our house which actually felt (and smelled) like Christmas!

My Christmas piano books were out but I'm too much of a chicken to play for everyone.  Lucky for me, one of the guests is a "trained in classic piano."  She happy browsed through the books and played the favorites while everyone stood around sipping cocktails and singing from the caroling books I'd saved from a Christmas cruise.  The surprising and touching and magical part of this is that my Jewish friends (some of whom have never heard these carols) were singing along! 

Another surprising thing here is the "Happy Holiday" versus "Merry Christmas."  Take the trend towards "Holiday" vs. "Christmas" and add in the complex cultural dynamic of Christians, Muslims and Jews, pair that with the fact that most people don't celebrate Christmas here, and the fact that we work for a politically correct government entity...and you get lots of Happy Holidays.  But not at our party.  All of our friends said Merry Christmas and it really meant a lot to us. 

Our tree and the many ornaments from my childhood were the highlight of the party.  And the make-shift advent wreath and the beautiful stockings I made. (Not really but I was proud of them and I want to put the picture on top!)

In short, it was a fabulous time!  Now that we have done Christmas here, it's time to go back to the States!!!  I probably won't post for the next three weeks (sorry), but we'll be on whirlwind tour of the States (at least the Midwest and the East Coast) and we'll be so busy seeing friends and doing everyday things we probably won't have time to write. (You can't possibly understand how excited I am to drive go grocery shopping.  Driving there without traffic, parking in a free parking lot with large spaces, paying in US dollars!!)