Celebrating in Several Languages

As with many churches around the world, our church reserves one of the Sundays before Christmas for the children's Christmas program. Each age group spends weeks preparing a special presentation which ranges from a simple song for the younger crowd to self written skits or elaborately choreographed dances for the older ones. The day of the program all the children were given festive hats to wear. Here is one of my friend's beautiful little girls in the grand entrance parade down the aisle.Our church has a wide mix of people in it from countries all around West Africa to Europe, the Americas and Asia.
Kay is one of several English speakers that go to Sunday school each week. In fact, the 6 English speakers that attend Sunday school are all in her class! For this reason, for the last few years her class has decided to sing a song in English. I try to find one with simple, repetitive words that all of the class can learn quickly. (Did you ever notice how many Christmas songs have complicated vocabulary and how few use repetitive words!?) Because so much of the education system here is orally based, the children have amazing memories and their ability to pick up other languages daily puts me to shame! The day of the program, the children were all given festive hats to wear. Here are Kay and her classmate, Bright, leading the singing of the English song. In addition to the song they learned this year, they sang last year's "Go Tell It on the Mountain." Each student also memorized one verse in the Christmas story. So together they were able to recount the scripture retelling of Jesus' birth. Kay was happy that by accident, she was given the same verse she memorized last year. When you are memorizing in a second language, you need all the help you can get! She did a great job! We were proud of her!
Here are two more of Kay's classmates and our near neighbors. They are Swiss and speak French at home, but are also fluent in English.
After the program's successful completion, the kids run outside to celebrate with snacks, juice and little gifts.

Christmas Eve

Somehow Christmas Eve snuck by without many photos being taken, but perhaps we can claim that is evidence of a fun evening where we were too busy to remember our cameras?

This is the first Christmas since the arrival of Ian's brother and family that we have all been together in Niger for the holidays. As our "family" here in Niger is so large, we decided to keep Christmas eve as our celebration with just our two households. Both Krista and I like traditions, so as this was the first year we have celebrated in Niger together, we decided to try some on for size.

Our first tradition, which I think might be a keeper, was having fondue for supper! Everyone enjoyed the special treat of two kinds of cheese fondue followed by chocolate fondue for desert! Bread, veggies, pretzals, fruit, cake, marshmellows...YUMMY!!!! Fondue is fun anywhere, but here it is extra special as both cheese and chocolate are quite pricy. Both Krista and I have 2 fondue pots, so even though we were a large group, we worked the logistics out quite nicely.

Another tradition we tried on for size is the first annual cousin produced Christmas play. Both Krista and I grew up having family Christmas plays as part of our own traditions, and both of us thought our kids would enjoy this one. I think this was another keeper! Heidi, as the oldest assumed the role of author and producer, which had its rocky moments. She had to learn a bit about compromise in this family of strong opinions, even if they were strong, little opinions! :) Most things got ironed out, Tom was happy to play any four legged creature, Elayna was radient as the angel and keeper of the star, Brynn and Kira with perhaps the most realistic costumes played Mary and Joseph,...they did a great job. I look forward to ensuing years as they develop in both their creativity and compromise skills! :) Here is a picture of the grande finale where they all lined up to sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." It was a fun evening and extra special when shared with family!

Christmas Programs

I know I am a bit slow here, but didn't want Grammy to miss out on any of our activities, especially the grandkids as the stars of the show! :) Christmas wouldn't seem like Christmas without some kind of performances from the kids. I recall being in many of them myself, often with tinsel in my pigtails... Here are the reviews from this past season!

The last day of school, there was a Christmas program at school. Tom wouldn't tell me much about it, but his teacher had sent home a note to parents asking them to please allow the children to dress in a manner they felt was appropriate... Tom requested a sheet! So off to school he went with his sheet. The kindergarten admirably performed a song about baby Jesus who was played by Tom wrapped in his sheet. The shepherds came and brought him a lamb (as in the picture below). The wise men came and brought him gifts etc. It was very cute. Tom thoroughly enjoyed being the center of attention as well as pretending to be a baby.

The Sunday before Christmas the Sunday school classes at church were given the morning service time to perform. Kay is the only one of our children that currently attends French Sunday School. Their class had practiced the chorus to "Go Tell it on the Mountain" in English (there are three anglophones in the class) and then the three who knew English sang one of the verses together. The church members got a big kick out of hearing the 7-9 year old class singing in English. They were a very enthusiastic audience! Ereina, Bright and Kay all sang with lots of gusto, but somehow the girls ended up with the microphone in the front, you can't even see Bright standing behind them in this picture!
In addition, each member of the class had memorized one verse from the Christmas story in Matthew. The kids all did a great job passing the microphone down the line, each reciting their verse in sequence. The church let out a roar after Ereina and Kay said their verses in French though. They obviously knew that French was not the girls' first language and were very kind in showing their appreciation of the girls' hard work at memorizing their verses. It was a fun morning, each class was so proud at showing their parents verses, songs, and even a play that they had worked so hard to learn.