Holiday Season In Turkey
Holidays are a mixed bag for everyone. Thanksgiving is about remembering our blessings and expressing gratitude. Christmas is a celebration of the coming of our Savior. Along with the celebration and gratitude are feelings, memories, and experiences of hurt, disappointment, and struggle. During our time in Turkey serving as missionaries, Thanksgiving and Christmas were mixed bags, and we celebrated in our own unique ways.
The biggest difference that Thanksgiving and Christmas were for us living in Turkey than for those who are in the US is that in Turkey, neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas are national holidays. Our first year in Turkey, we celebrated Thanksgiving with a few families in Istanbul on the last Thursday of November. It was strange traveling to the host’s apartment because everyone we past on the way there was just going about their day like it was any other midweek day in November. School was in session, banks, barbers, and grocery stores were open. When we moved to a smaller city, there were fewer people to celebrate with. Then, in Eregli, where we lived for 11 years, we only celebrated Thanksgiving with others twice. The rest of the time, it was just the six of us celebrating Thanksgiving together. Before Kathryn started teaching, we would take the day off from school and try to make it special. We would spend the first half of the day preparing food, eat a late lunch, and then typically watch movies together.
Food was different, as well. We didn’t experience this difference our first year because the families we celebrated with had brought cans goods with them from the US. That year, we had cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Then our first year outside of Istanbul, we had to special-order a turkey from the butcher. We tried to get the biggest turkey he could get, but we were disappointed with how small it was when we picked it up. However, when we went to put it in our oven, we realized that the turkey was too big to fit into the oven. We did persevere, and we got it cooked, but it didn’t taste that good. It was dry, chewy, and strangely gamey. We tried to cook a Turkey a few times, but later on settled on buying chicken shwarma from our favorite restaurant.
Turkey wasn’t the only food that was different. Celery for stuffing seemed impossible to find. We would look for celery stocks in the grocery store and in the local farmers' market, but we never saw it. We looked up the word for celery in our Turkish dictionary and then asked for “kereviz” at the local market. One of the vendors grabbed a big white root veg thing and repeated “kereviz” back to us. The look on our faces confused the vendor because he was giving us what we asked for, but our faces shouted, “That’s not what I’m looking for.” The big white root veg thing turned out to be the other end of the celery that we were used to. The green stocks that we use in stuffing grows from a root ball that is the only part that is eaten in Turkey. Celery root is called celeriac in English, and it tastes different than the stock. All of this to say, we didn’t have stuffing as part of our Thanksgiving meals in Turkey.
Christmas in Turkey is very different as well. For some reason, Christmas has been blended with New Year’s. In December, malls are decorated with Christmas trees, and Christmas music is played in grocery stores. People will set up New Year trees in their homes and buy each other gifts. With a population that is 99.9% Muslim, rebranding Christmas as New Year's allows people to celebrate without betraying their religion. Muslim and national conservatives don’t like the celebration of Christmas, which can result in a man dressed up as “Father New Year’s” (Santa) getting roughed up. As a foreign Christian, celebrating Christmas in Turkey is lackluster and frustrating. The decorations that are in malls and stores don’t represent the celebration of Emmanuel. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, most people don’t even know that the majority of the Christian world is celebrating; they think Christmas is December 31 or January 1, and they're not sure. Most churches in Turkey have a special service that is evangelistically focused on the Saturday evening before Christmas, and then the Sunday before is a congregation-focused celebration. We, as a family, would take the 25th off from school and then make sure to take down our Christmas decorations before December 31st in order to communicate that New Year’s isn’t Christmas. A few times, our neighbors and friends asked Kathryn why we took down our decorations before New Year’s, but it was hard for them to understand when Kathryn explained that Christmas is a week before New Year's and that we were only celebrating Christmas.
Experiencing the holiday season in Turkey for so many years has influenced us deeply. Since we were the only people celebrating Christmas in our city on December 25th for so many years, we enjoy simply being together as a nuclear family on the holidays. I appreciate a large gathering and celebrating with others, but I now have a deep affinity for the holidays to just be “us.”
As I reflect on what the holidays were like for my family and me while we lived in Turkey, I’m challenged to pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ who are in places where Christmas isn’t a national holiday. I wonder how they celebrate. I wonder what traditions they have. May our prayers bless them this holiday season. May their hearts be encouraged and strengthened by our Savior, Jesus Christ.