Here’s Kendall and her good friend Janie with the castles in the background. 

Here’s Reed with his friend Jack. 

Kirby Ann tagged along with Valerie. I had to sit out because I have a big cut on my leg that hurt terribly when I put my skates on. I didn’t even make it out of the skate rental room. 

As is a tradition among many American missionaries here in Budapest on Christmas Eve, we went ice skating today at the main city park in downtown Budapest. It is a beautiful place and a lot of fun with all of our friends. Here are a few of the pictures. 

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . Jack Frost nipping at your nose
. . AND FISH!!!” I mentioned in my last post that Fish Soup is the food
of the day here in Hungary. These are just a few of the billboards that
have popped up around town over the last week or so. I especially like
the one with Frosty riding the fish. It feels more like Christmas
everyday.

One of the things we enjoy about living here in Budapest is learning about different cultures. While we knew that we are clearly over the top in celebrating Christmas in America (I just saw Christmas with the Kranks yesterday and it is pretty much a documentary on the subject), Hungarians are at the other end of the spectrum. Here’s what Christmas looks like for them:

Dec 6th – St. Miklos Day – This is the only day that Santa shows up. Kids are supposed to clean their boots before they go to sleep and set them on the window sill. In the morning, St. Miklos (Santa) has filled them with candy and goodies. It is a fun day, but not too big of a deal. There is school and work and everything else on this day. Just some candy for the kids.

Dec 7-23rd – Not much . . . some Christmas decorations (1 out of 100 houses). The stores are similar to America. In fact, the traffic jams around the major stores were unbelievable. No Christmas parties or anything like that.

Dec 24th – Today is the big day for Hungarians. This is the day that they setup their tree (not the weekend after Thanksgiving). Tonight, the kids go out with someone, while the the tree is setup and baby Jesus brings presents to the house on Christmas eve. They get together with family for a couple of days, but pretty much that is it. On top of it all, they have fish soup. All of the billboards around town have put up Christmas signs with pictures of “Live Carp” and the good deals that they have. The stores have lines with 50 people in them waiting for their shot at the tank with the live fish. We don’t participate in this tradition, because as Americans, fish doesn’t sound like Christmas.

All of this reminds me that in God’s eyes, none of this has anything to do with Christmas. It is about His passionate rescue plan for us in sending His son to die for our sins. It’s pretty easy to forget this, no matter what country you are in.