St.Nicholas in Cambodia

This is just going to be a short in between post about St. Nicholas' Day. I started to write it a few days after the event but I'm just finishing it now on Christmas Day, sorry for the delay
I got the initial idea back in October probably, one morning during Kmai lesson. St.Nicholas has always been something very special for me. As kids we never knew which day it was on, only that it was sometime in December. On one of those cold mornings, we would come down the stairs to a still dark dining room lit only by candle light, the table would have a special St. Nicholas table cloth on, tea would be in the special Christmas tea cups, special St. Nicholas music playing in the stereo, and on the table on the special St. Nicholas plates would be Lebkuchen and Stolen, two German specialties my Dad would have brought back from a previous buisiness trip. We could only eat these treats on St. Nicholas Day, on Christmas Eve, and the few days following before it was all gone. All these things made St. Nicholas one of the highlights of the year.

I wanted to be able to celebrate this special day with the kids. An added bonus is that they had no idea that St. Nicholas Day even existed, so it would be even more of a surprise for them. I started out preparations about a month ahead of time: Writing out the background story of the actual Bishop Nicholas, making a list of things to buy, finding sympathizers who were ready to buy the stuff and get up at an unnatural time in the morning to set things out. Then the day before, on Sunday, I set out with S'dung to get the treats. I was supprised how much it all was, when you take something like an apple and multiply it by forty, you've a heck of a lot of apples. That afternoon in a ram-session probably yet unseen in this world I cut out 40 red paper snowflakes and everything was ready for the next day.

That next morning at the extremely ungodly time of 3:45 Alicia and I got up and started to prepare the tables. We but the paper snowflakes on the plates and the treats in to of it, and melted two red candles to each table.

This is how a finished plate looked

This is how it all looked, minus the kids of course

Me with the tables and flash

We were finished by a little bit after 4:30, which is when the kids get woken up. They were all busy working upstairs, and so the first ones came down around 5:30.

We just had one candle for light while we were waiting for the kids, so the wouldn't see anything before it was time

Alicia and S'dung waiting for the kids to come

They'd coming runing down the stairs, stop short, andbwe'd here a gasp and "Oh loi!" (Oh pretty!). In the beginning they were all too shy to even come in.

All the kids too scared to come in

Some of them had to sweep the main room though, so one by one they started to file in and look at the tables, but none of them went too close or touched them. The reactions were really touching to see, one of the boys Darow, came down looked throught the door, immediately turned around and ran to hug Alicia, to overcome to say anything. At 6:45 they were finished with the before breakfast chores and they all lined up to listen to S'dung tell them what it was all about.

All very interested

They said a prayer (as they always to before meals) and then it was a mad dash for the tables, at first they all grabbed their plate and started to run away (one of them stuffed all of it in his pockets), until S'dung told them that there was enough for everyone and that they should all sit down.

the mad dash for the tables

Then they all got their breakfast (which was rice of course) and sat down to enjoy ist and their treats in the candle light. Since a picture is supposed to say more than a thousand words here are a number, I hope you can get a bit of a feeling of what it was like.

Borin, Tong and Nob

Rachana

 

Borin, Tong and Nob again

Long

Chantria

Yong and Rosa

Long



Yong

Chow with a mouthful of rice

 Then all to soon, the sun rose, it got light, and the children had to get to their after-breakfast chores and off to school.

The sunrise that morning

Morning chores before school

Well I've just managed to finish this on Christmas, but it does fit to the whole general holiday season. I hope to be posting a post (I don't know another way of saying it) about Christmas in the next few weeks. A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

Peace and Love
Sarah