...it snowed on Christmas

'What? When was that?' I hear you all gasp in disbelief.

Yeah, I know. It's kind of sad, isn't it. I live in cold, cold Estonia - a frozen wasteland for most of the year. It starts snowing in October and if we're lucky the snow melts in April. But for the past few years there's been no snow on Christmas. Because that's just what the weather is like here. For the past few weeks it's been snowing, raining, snowing and raining again. Sometimes it doesn't rain or snow but the ground freezes over so everything is nice and slippery. It's the weather's way of saying 'I hate you and I hope you die but I'm not going to work super hard to achieve it.' Yup, Estonia: a place where even the weather is passive aggressively trying to kill you.

But let's rewind a bit and go back to Japan. 'Another Japan story?!' I hear you moan in disappointment.  Yeah, another Japan story. This is my blog so just deal with it.

The year was 2013 and I was in Japan. Christmas was approaching fast and the semester was ending. This meant that a lot of our friends were leaving Japan and a lot of others were going back home for the holidays. There was only a small group of us left which meant the apartment building was going to be pretty empty and quiet. I didn't have the time or the money to go back home so I opted to stay. That being said, I did feel a bit sad and uneasy doing it. A lot of my close friends were leaving the apartment building and I had no plans for Christmas - it looked like I might be spending the holidays alone and that was a whole new level of sad for me.

Thankfully, one of the Finnish girls - Minna - contacted me and proposed we hold a Scandinavian Christmas Party for the other students. I was all for it. After all, I didn't have anything else to do and I was pretty psyched about the fact she considered Estonia to be a part of Northern Europe. Take that, people who call us Eastern Europe! We're further north than Denmark! Also, take that, Denmark!

'Why don't we cook some traditional Christmas foods and invite everyone over,' Minna suggested, 'I'm sure you know some traditional Estonian recipes that everyone would like.'

'Yeah... let's do that...'

Traditional Estonian Christmas foods, eh? Umm... sauerkraut? Oh wait, that's German. Bloody sausages and black pudding? Pretty sure those are German as well. Meat... jelly...? Ugh, I wouldn't even know where to start with that and I haven't eaten it in ages. Pretty sure it's disgusting. I honestly had no idea what to cook because... it's pretty hard to find traditional Estonian recipes that are purely Estonian. Historically we were slaves! We didn't have food, let alone recipes! We ate twigs and dirt and the occasional rat on Christmas! Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad but seriously - Estonian cooking has a lot of German and Russian influences and to find something truly original is a difficult task. What exactly is a 'traditional Estonian dish'? Kama? Uh... sour cream? Rye bread? Sadness and misery? Pretty hard to plate that though... 

None of those things were freely available in Japan. In fact, if you want real sour cream in Japan you have to send out a 100-man search party and hope they return within a week. Or you can go to a bigger mall and spend an hour (at least) looking for it in the dairy section only to find a miniature packet stuffed between a box of sesame-flavored soymilk and some sort of weird string-cheese looking product that's apparently made of seaweed. Because most food products in Japan are either made of rice or seaweed.

Anyway, it took me a while to finally figure out what to serve during the Christmas party. I couldn't figure out any traditional Estonian foods that I could have prepared without an oven and with the raw materials available to me so I decided to do what I always do in these situations: bullshit my way through it. I made a salmon dip with cream cheese, smoked salmon and onions, cut up some rye bread and I guess we also had some mashed potatoes and meatballs. And mulled wine, I think... Honestly, it's all kind of fuzzy but I do remember the 'authentic traditional Estonian salmon dip'. It was great and technically it was a traditional Estonian dish because it was traditionally made by me - an Estonian. That's how it works, right?

So we got our stuff ready, spent half a day cooking and in the end we had a relatively large group of people attending our Christmas dinner. Everyone was sitting on the floor and eating off plastic plates but we were pretty content with it. At least we weren't alone and it wasn't as cold anymore. We listened to some Christmas songs and just enjoyed each other's company and in the end headed off to karaoke, like we always did. My memories might be a bit fuzzy but I'm pretty sure it started snowing as we were walking to the carwash-karaoke place that we always frequented. Pretty sure...

The snow was pretty much gone the next day but it didn't matter much. At least for a moment we had a white Christmas and that made Japan feel much more like home. Sure, a part of me still missed my family and friends but at least it felt like Christmas. What did not feel like Christmas was the karaoke. Sure, we sang some classic Christmas songs like 'All I want for Christmas', 'Last Christmas' (by Wham!!!!!!) and 'I'll make a man out of you' (What? That's not a Christmas song, you say? Well, I say it is and you can just shut your mouth when you're talking to me!) and it was great fun but it was definitely one of the more unconventional Christmas things I'd ever done... Not to mention that we preformed what must have been the worst rendition of 'What does the fox say' in human history. Truly - we took a snapchat and sent it to one of the student who'd already left. She hated that song... and we loved that. Oh, good times! 

But what was the moral of this story? No moral, really. I just decided to remind myself of simpler times. Back when the grass was green and... oh wait, it still is.... in December... a few days before Christmas... Oh well, I guess it's something we need to get used to now. Honestly though, even though I'd love to have a white Christmas it's not 100% necessary for me to enjoy the holiday. What's important is spending time with your loved ones, keeping old traditions alive and just having a good time. So yeah, even if it doesn't snow this year I'll still have a good time because I'll be spending the holidays with the people I care most about in this world. And that's all that matters.