Christmas at Home

Christmas is over and it was a fine Christmas, too. When on the 23rd I got a bit nervous about finding a tree, because the few places I had had in mind had closed already for holidays by Friday afternoon, Clerg was so kind to even rent a car and take us to a ride around Chicago neighborhoods in search of a Christmas tree. Luckily, already the first corner we stopped at there was a perfect little tree waiting for us. I decorated him with the Maui leias (the flowers they carry around their necks, traditionally) and Christmas lights I always have at home.

After cooking the whole day - meatloaf and mashed sweet potatoes and lots of good wine - we went to pay what Reverend John Buchanan called a compulsory visit to the Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue. I had read in the reviews (there are reviews for anything online nowadays) that this church was definitely to see and to be seen and it suited this one to a T. The church was packed with families, one better off than the other, ladies wearing diamonds, pearls and Prada fur and the youth was as if stepped down from a Tommy Hilfiger ad.

We were a half an hour early but still about the last ones to get a seat in the side hall of the church where about five hundred people could participate in the sermon through a screen. However, when so many people are singing together, and this is what a Christmas Eve service usually is in any Christian church, it sounds really great and we did get our Christmas feeling, and happily walked back humming Joy to the World. At home our tree was waiting with wonderful presents and according to the Estonian tradition, we finished the Christmas Eve off with Die Hard I.