'Tis the season....

'Tis the season...for a transcontinental move.

A few weeks ago, I had to go into Dreamland (a local store that is sort of like the best departments of Target - a small books and electronics department, school supplies, toys and seasonal stuff) to buy a birthday present. The parking lot was cram-packed, and a quick glance at the register when I walked in the door revealed lines of 15-20 people.

Yikes. What the heck was going on?

And then I realized: It was noon, and it was the week before St. Nicolas Day.

St. Nicolas Day seemed like such a minor entry on the list in my jumbled mess of a head, that I almost forgot all about it.

Let me back up just a bit. Here in Belgium, children get all of their presents from St. Nicolas instead of  Santa Clause. That first year here, with a five and three-year old, it took us a bit of scrambling to explain this discrepancy. But we settled on the concept that there are different "Christmas Territories." St. Nicolas covered Belgium, and knew that we were American and that Santa would be visiting our house on Christmas Day, so he only brought us small gifts on St. Nicolas Day. When Isabelle came home from school this year, with a "Barbie House" on her "St. Nicolas List" she looked at me like I had three heads when I explained the Christmas Territory concept. So I had to add in the fact that St. Nicolas knew that we were moving before Christmas and that any gifts he brought would have to be small enough to fit in a suitcase or else she would have to wait for our cargo shipment (six weeks) to get to play with it.

Whatever. St. Nicolas brought us a bunch of French books and CD's this year, and everyone was disappointed (except AJ who is all of the sudden into French Pop music.)  

But it got me thinking about how the meaning of Christmas was going to be very different for our family this year. And how maybe I could make that into a good thing.