Dear diary,
according to our culture, we celebrate these dates in one way or another:
- Here in Turkey there is no Christmas, but they celebrate New Year.
- Russians celebrate New Year and Christmas, but orthodox Christmas takes place in January, not in December.
In Russia celebration of New Year is dramatically important: people get ready to this night throughout the whole year, they make plans for New Year parties months before, as well as search for special presents for their beloved once.
New Year is usually celebrated with family and closest Friends. People prepare a great dinner that includes mashed potatoes, Russian salad (but Russians actually call it “Olivier” and strongly believe that it originally comes from France), meat dishes and red caviar (this is really important!). There is a tradition: during the countdown, you should write your secret dream on the piece of paper, burn it, put the ashes in your champagne and drink it. If you followed the whole procedure, be sure that your dream will come true!
As you may know, because of historical and cultural reasons, Russia celebrates Orthodox Christmas on January, 7th. This day is celebrated on a smaller scale comparing to New Year, but it is still special for many Russians. Some people go to church; others put funny costumes on and go around singing Christmas carols, some just join their families for Christmas dinner.
- In Spain, Christmas and New Year are celebrated. In schools, institutes and universities there are holidays for Christmas and people join their families for the dinner on Christmas Eve (December 24th), for the lunch on Christmas ( December 25th) and the dinner on New Year Day ( December 31th).
In New Year, it is a tradition in Spain to eat 12 grapes after dinner with the countdown to the New Year. After this, it is a night to party.
By last, there is another important date in Spain at Christmas: January 6th. The night of January 5th the three wise men leave gifts for everyone in the home, and at the morning people find the presents in the Christmas tree.
We have decided to bring Christmas spirit to our organization Bodrum Dans Külübü. In the school, there were boxes with a lot of decoration for New Year, included Christmas tree, and we were decorating the school one morning with Bahar.
In spite of, here there aren’t holidays for Christmas, we are so lucky because we have some days and we have got plans: Arina will go to Georgia and Lucía goes to Spain this Saturday.
We wish you a nice Christmas next to your loved ones 🙂