#mcrp.task

[southby]

the thing was, it was easy. christmas was easy because there was only one gift to give & one gift to receive. as much as southby tried to shake the feeling though, he never could completely remove the idea from his head that there should be more. that at one time, there’d been more.

[renmolnar]

task #001: happy holidays!

Christmas time and the holidays are different in Hungary than in the US. While she was married, she adopted to her husband’s and his family’s traditions, but once she got a divorce and moved to Morgan City, she decided to keep her own family’s and the Hungarian traditions. This means that her Christmas/holiday schedule in kind of different.

For her Santa Clause comes on December 6th, when he brings presents and chocolate and some fruits. This is usually for children, so Ren doesn’t celebrate this per say other than giving some cute chocolate in the form of Santa Clause to her sister. (She is kind of bummed that Lily didn’t come sooner, she could have introduced this to her, but this year they are only doing Christmas and Ren is hopeful for the next year.) Before Christmas she lights candles for the Advent Sundays, one for the first, two for the second and so on until the last Sunday which is four candles.

Christmas for Ren is not the 25th but the 24th, Christmas Eve. Hungarian Christmas traditions are deeply rooted in Christian traditions, which means that Jesus Christ brings the presents on the eve of the 24th and the rest of the days is for celebration and spending time with family. Which was hard in the first couple of years after her divorce, she felt alone and loney, especially because she didn’t have the kind of money she would have needed to travel home even just for the holidays. So she always asked her parents to call and Skype her for most of it (even with the time difference) and send some traditional Hungarian Christmas foods (that they could actually send over).

Since her parents moved to Morgan City as well, the two of them have been spending the holidays together. And now that Lily is here too, the plan is to have her sister come over for Christmas Eve and the tree of them to hang out and spend it together, and then on the next day Lily and her would go over to her sister, spend some time there and the 26th to spend just the two of them.

When Ren moved to the US, she couldn’t cook to save her life. So over the years she asked her dad (who was always the cook of the family) to coach her through Skype and teach her a bunch of traditional and not so traditional foods (bless the internet, really, Ren wasn’t sure how she would have survived without it). Now she cooks a lot and definitely cooks the Christmas Even dinner, which consists of fish soup, stuffed cabbage and poppy seed bejgli as dessert.