Getting ready for Sinterklaas

With Sinterklaas coming up to close behind Thanksgiving, I like to get things out for the holiday as soon after Thanksgiving as I can so that we have some time to feel festive before Sinterklaas Dag.

So, on the morning of Thanksgiving I packed up all of our Fall decorations and pulled out the Christmas boxes from under our stairs. The next morning when our nanny, Atife, arrived we pulled everything out. I had already unpacked the Nutcrackers, but we unpacked all of the Dutch decorations and the Christmas tree. We bought that little fake tree a long time ago, and it is starting to seem a bit skimpy after years of shedding it's plastic needles. It may almost be time for an upgrade.

Atife was so thrilled to get to decorate a Christmas tree. I put on all of the lights, but she helped Arcadia put on the star rope and all of the glass balls. Matthijas was in charge of the bottom row. Our nanny is a funny lady. She absolutely loves holidays. I thought she had been giddy over Halloween, but that was nothing compared to how excited she was about Christmas. She loved decorating her first Christmas tree and wants her daughter to be able to see one.

I pulled out a picture of Jesus and Mary, so we talked a bit about Jesus and his birth. I think a lot of people forget that Muslims do believe in Jesus, just in a different way. They believe the whole story of his birth and his life and his death, they just don't include his sacrifice and resurrection. His role is as one of the great prophets, like Abraham or Moses. He just gets trumped by Mohammed who is considered the last of the prophets. Atife said she had just seem a movie on TV about the baby Jesus and Mary. The movie had the baby Jesus talking to Mary, and that sort of creeped her out, but she liked the movie. maybe we'll have her watch some better movies. Her response reminded me of that of our friend Fifiek, a Muslim girl we knew in Chicago. I had a picture of Jesus in my house, one where is head is covered by a shawl. Fifiek loved that picture of Jesus, she said it was the best she had ever seen. When Christians have pictures of a bloody Jesus hanging on a cross, it doesn't really speak to the common beliefs we do share with Muslims about Jesus, but Jesus the humble teacher is something they really respond to.