The Best Christmas Ever

If you've been reading my blog for, lets say, more than one year, you'd know by now that I get very-very depressed around major holidays, as I miss my family and my home country.
It is very hard to let go of thinks you are familiar with and memories and traditions you love and cherish, so Chirstmas here in Israel it has been a struggle, especially in the past years.
So, this year it came as a HUGE, and I mean IMENSE surprise, as my husband took me to a trip to Nazareth, for the Christmas Eve. It was an organised trip, so it has a guide and that way was easier to find the attractions and not get lost in the old city.

To my surprise, Nazareth was dressed for Christmas all right. It was actually the first time since I've been living here that I saw Christmas decorations in an israeli city, complete with a huge decorated fir tree, street lights, decorated shops and people and kids sporting red Santa hats.

We visited the beautiful Basilica of the Announciation (the Roman catholic one), I was there before , some 14 years ago when I was traveling the country and writing my book about Israel. I loved thae Basilica then and I admired once again the different renditions of the Virgin Mary. My favourite is the Japanese one...it is so refreshing to see that for them, the Virgin Mary was...well...very similar to a Japanese woman, as for baby Jesus...Japanese as well. But the piece of art was really exquisite, as well as other ones, like the Black Polish Mary, or the Indian one...

I cannot tell you how happy I was to be there, soaking up the festive atmosphere...We watched the Christmas parade and the fireworks and listened to carols in Arabic...

The only drawback was that the trip was a no-kids one, so Maya had to stay at home...But she was pretty happy, as her brother and his girlfriend babysat her  - and she adores both of them, and she ate ice-cream and chocolates and God knows what else, because when we finally returned home, somewhere around 9 o'clock in the evening, we found her as high as a kite, on sweets and sisterly love...But I promised myself as I hugged her and kissed her sweaty curls that next year we'll go together...

(The pictures that accompany this post aren't mine, for some reason I cannot upload my own from my computer to the blog, they all come up garbled...if anyone has any idea how to fix this, I would be happy to know it...)