Preparing For Christmas

This blog post is inspired by my Grandma Weiner and the wonderful email she sent me yesterday. The email was just a friendly hello and her telling me she and my grandpa were thinking of me, as they always do, but she also asked about Christmas in Scotland and if there are different customs to prepare for Christmas. This got me thinking about all I have been doing this month and how it has been such a crazy three weeks. And how I can't believe Christmas is on Friday! I have been doing a lot to prepare for Christmas both at my placement and in our flat and at mass. So in this blog post I will be sharing how I have been preparing.

In traditional American customs our flat tried not to mention Christmas music or the holiday until December first, after Thanksgiving, but in Scotland Thanksgiving doesn't exist so Christmas festivals, lights, and all the stores had all their decorations up by November 20th, which we all thought was much too early. So on December 1st we decided it was time to put up a tree, play music, and of course take Christmas pictures in ugly Christmas sweaters!(which are actually really cute)

 Lights in the city and some silly Christmas Pics!

More lights in George Square and they also put up a huge ice rink in this square.

Although the decorations are all around town by November 20th Scottish people are very particular of when their tree is taken up or down. They have a tradition of keeping the tree up 12 days before and 12 days after Christmas. The Christmas carols are all very similar but they have a few of their own, for example, Fairytale of New York and Merry Christmas Everybody, and Mary's Boy Child, which I learned. But what I thought was more interesting was that some of the traditional church carols are sung with different tunes, such as Away in a Manger. Another interesting tradition which I thought was really nice is that everyone gives out Christmas cards to everyone, not necessarily the ones with pictures but just a nice card signed from the person.


Also this advent season the Gorbals Parish Church has been involved in Interfaith Scotland which means that the Church has been getting together with a Mosque and a Gurdwara nearby and have been doing different events. At one of the events I helped out with I got to show other people of other faiths how to make a Christingle. I had never heard of that before so when I signed up to volunteer I was sure to ask how do I make one of those and what does it mean. It is an old German Christian symbol and decoration for your house. It is made of an orange, a candle, some sweeties, a red ribbon, and cocktail sticks. Each piece symbolizes something different. The candle represents the world, the candle represents Christ's light and Christingle means Christ's light. The red ribbon goes around the orange and symbolizes Jesus' blood and how he died for us. The sweeties go on the cocktail sticks and are representative of the gifts God gives us and the cocktail sticks are then poked into the orange at 4 corners to represent either the four seasons or the four corners of the world. It was an interesting symbol to share and a lot of fun to make!

Also this year working in a church I have been encouraged to think about the season of Advent more than I ever have in my life. Yesterday at mass we were told that the fourth week of advent is the week of Joy. The Homily talked about being joyful about Christmas and how happy and special a time it is. I think the priest was correct but since I work with marginalized communities and am living away from my home and family it is hard to always be joyful at this time of year. 

Being on my own away from my family has made me much more aware of others that may be alone and how sad it is because everyone expects you to have all these grand plans and to be constantly surrounded by people. It is also really stressful living on a budget during Christmas. The culture is very heavily weighted towards spending money and buying presents and it can be stressful if you don't have money to spend. Another thing I have noticed that makes this season hard for people is for those suffering from addictions. Temptation is always around but during this time people are always offering you drinks at parties, bringing drinks or sweets as presents, and a lot of traditional Christmas drinks are alcoholic like eggnog and mulled wine. It can be hard for someone who constantly struggles each day to say no to that. 

So I congratulate all those with addictions who are staying strong, I give comfort and love to the lonely, and I pray for peace and a worry free mind for those struggling with money issues. Although the holidays can be hard they are also a time to rejoice and prepare for Jesus and the love of Jesus and to remember to love our neighbors, communities, strangers, and to give as much as we can in this holiday season. 

And finally, I also have been blessed to be able to attend/volunteer at Christmas parties and different Christmas events in the Gorbals community so here are some pictures of those.

 

Tea and carol singing with some of the elderly women at Gorbals

 

Pudsey the bear who is on TV in Scotland and the mascot for BBC Children in Need came to the Gorbals Children's Choir Christmas party! The man in the suit is my supervisor John. We had a good laugh struggling with the costume and not being knocked over by the children.

Pictures from Bridging The Gap's Christmas Party. The kids had a contest as to who could decorate the black paper and trees best. This is my teams great work. There is also a picture with one of the volunteers, John, in our awesome Christmas jumpers. And there is a picture of me sitting on Santa's lap, who is another volunteer, Mario, and all of Santa's helpers around him. And they are Kenny, Pamela, and Roz. 

Blessings, 

Julie

I'm Thankful For....

Happy belated Thanksgiving Everyone!! This Thanksgiving was very different than any Thanksgiving I've ever had. Instead of the normal traditional Thursday Thanksgiving with mom's side of the family and traditional crazy Saturday Thanksgiving at my Uncle B and Aunt P's house with my dad's side of the family, I had a working week and two of my own Thanksgiving celebrations. It is at times like these where the culture is so different that most people do not even know what Thanksgiving is and you have to explain about the pilgrims and the indians that you tend to be homesick.

I'm not going to lie, this week was really difficult. This week was the first time I truly felt homesick and couldn't be comforted. It was the first time I have missed a big holiday with my family and I don't know if I will want to do it again. But although it was a wee bit lonely I was able to talk and see everyone over skype. I got to see all my family together and was thankful that they are alive and well and safe and that they were all happy! Although Thanksgiving wasn't exactly how it always is, I am thankful for what I am doing here in Scotland and I am thankful for all the people here who were around to help me celebrate.

So here is a list with pictures of all the things I am thankful for this year so far!

1) My crazy wonderful friends from Oregon

2) My lovely and extremely supportive mom(Lisa) and dad(Chris)

3) My inspirational sister(Erica) and her goofy fiancé(Dave) 

4) My Flatmates here in Scotland: Laura Kate, Amanda, Sam, and Iona

5) Beautiful places to Hike and Scotland as a country in general

6) The opportunity to be a Young Adult Volunteer(YAV) this year

7) My fellow YAVs across the world, especially my fellow UK YAVs

8) The Watch Ashore Ladies who come into the cafe every other Wednesday. I thank these ladies for making me feel like I have a few extra moms around and for their kindness and hospitality they have given me over the last three months. 

9) The opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving in a new country and the yummy American food we prepared for our guests. And the much needed advice from my mom on how to cook the dishes prepared.

10) My amazing supportive Site Coordinator Lynn and all the hard work she does

11) My extended Family on both sides

12) My good health and happiness

13) And last but definitely not least, God for all the amazing things he has done and will continue to do in my life. 

Priority Areas Gathering- Family Matters

The last few days I was blessed with the opportunity to attend The Priority Areas Gathering which had a theme of "Family Matters." The Priority Areas committee is responsible for the support and development of the Church of Scotland's work within its poorest 68 communities. All the churches that the Young Adult Volunteers are placed in are priority area churches. They have this conference every year with a different theme. I am very happy to report that the conference was extremely beneficial.

I enjoyed hearing stories of many other priority area churches, their accomplishments and the aspects of their communities that still need development. It was the first time since I have been here in Glasgow where I have been able to reflect on what I have been doing and reflect on my community. Over the past three days I was able to look frankly at my community and my role as a volunteer and I was able to ask questions and think about ways to improve.

We also heard from a retired minister of a priority area community and his wife who shared their experience and what they learned. They talked about suffering being unavoidable and how even though we suffer, God is there suffering right next to us. They also talked about power and how the church tends to try and have power and people want power, even if they want that power to do good. What we need to realize is that power corrupts, and that in the priority areas there isn't a lot of power. The people in poor areas instead have love, acceptance, perseverance, and with all those things they can change their situations. And since there are 68 communities struggling with the same types of issues we can actually work together and unite as a family. We can share ideas and advice.

In groups we came up with values we thought were significant in the priority areas. Some of the ones in my group were support, trust, acceptance, status quo is a no go, hospitality, vulnerability, and outward looking. We spent the three days focusing on how these values are important in each of our communities and what we can do to make these values come to life.

It allowed me the time to realize that Gorbals has so much potential and that there are so many great things they are doing in the community but that there are also places for growth and change. I feel called to bring forward what I learned at the conference and to think of new ways to get more people from the community involved in Sunday Church but also to get the Sunday church people more involved in the day to day community programs that happen each day. In my group a lot of the other churches were noticing that there is a gap between the people that attend church each Sunday and the people that attend community events in the church during the week. We all wanted to bridge this gap and have more involvement from both groups.

It was an eye opening opportunity for me to realize an opportunity to jump in and make some changes in my community. The conference allowed me to network with other communities in the same situation, and it was a time for all the priority areas communities to share their accomplishments and their strengths. I am so glad I was able to attend and I hope to be able to take back all the things I learned and make some changes in Gorbals.

During the free time I was also able to go see a viewpoint of where the highlands start so I got some great pictures of the changing autumn leaves.

 These two pictures are taken outside of the house we stayed in. It was called Gartmore House.

 A picture of a tree outside the house. The falling leaves were just too beautiful to not take a picture.

 

These next pictures are all of parts of Trossachs National Park which is where the line between the lowlands and the highlands of Scotland lies. We went to a viewpoint where you could look over the glen (valley) or look up to the rolling hills. I hope to go back and hike around next time. Today when we were leaving some of the mountains we passed already had snow on them!