Decorations go a long way into making the season "feel" like Christmas, which isn't obviously the primary focus of Christmas, but in its way, we have found that decorating for Christmas does actually help us focus on Christ in the advent period, and also eases the ache of being far from family during the holidays.
We also tried out starting a new Christmas tradition that also shares some of our own culture with our neighbours. Using a recipe from the women's group that Marianne is still a part of online from Canada, Marianne was busy baking up a storm for three days, with the goal of delivering the cookies as a family to our neighbours on Christmas Eve day and Christmas Day. It was a great way to connect with our neighbours, and offer to pray with them for whatever they are going through.
We liked the idea very much, so Marianne wrote Elias' first letter, and Mike illustrated some of the highlights. We figured that a 5-year-old may not be too excited by receiving a letter, so the pictures were meant to help draw his attention. But actually, he was quite attentive to it, and I think he enjoyed the memories we wrote. Since his birthday is so close to the beginning of the new year, his last year was essentially all of the year of 2020, which as we all know was a year to remember! Despite all the difficulties of 2020, through COVID, God did give our family a very precious gift - the gift of time together with our families, to cement the bond between Elias and his grandparents. And trains...lots of time spent at the Belleville train station and various train museums, and the proliferation of a wooden train collection!