Is this what Christmas feels like for people in ministry? Our church finished all of our Christmas celebratory events on the 23rd. We've had 2 weeks of special events. And of course, for at least a month before those events started there was preparatory work. Basically, since mid-November, our church has been in Christmas mode. And now that it's all over, there's a general feeling like Christmas has already passed... when it's really tomorrow. Well, actually today considering the time. Merry Christmas! Midnight's come and gone and no special present from Santa.
Throughout the day today, I asked people in the church if they felt the same way... if it felt like we're way passed Christmas already. Everybody agreed. It's the weirdest feeling. Knowing in my head that Christmas is tomorrow, while feeling like we're well into January.
I guess it doesn't help that I'm not gonna be doing the usual Christmas things for a second year in a row. In the Satake home, we've had a way of celebrating Christmas. Christmas Eve is the opening of presents. But before we could open our presents, the kids all had to put on a mini-talent show. For me, this usually meant that I would play the piano. A Christmas song and then the song I was, at the time, working on. As for Christmas Day itself, the main event was the making of mochi (rice cakes). My grandpa would get the fire started to cook the mochi rice. That's right... no rice cooker. In the Satake household, using a rice cooker for the mochi making is cheating. Some people celebrate their ethnicity by digging down and remembering their roots... on Christmas morning we dig down way deep into the Earth's core and play in the magma. Once a batch of rice was cooked, my grandpa would bring it out to our driveway to dump the rice into the old style stone bowl where a group of people are anxiously waiting to pound the rice with wooden mallets. The batch of rice is then pounded and pounded until it's one homogenous mass. For all you Chinese readers out there... this is the reason why Japanese sticky rice is better (although I'll admit, Japanese fried rice is absolutely horrible)! This huge glob of rice goo is then broken up into personal portions to make the final product. This goes on from morning to sundown which is then usually followed up with dinner featuring self-serve hand roll sushi (temakizushi).