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To: Christmas around the globe, From: Washington County

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Jon Allen, of Washington, remembers the first year he and his wife, Mira Allen, celebrated Christmas together in Bamberg, Germany, in 1986. They got a real tree and put real wax candles on it, as is German tradition, and kept a bucket of water in the corner of the room.

“I sweated blood every time she lit it,” Jon said.

While we celebrate Christmas traditions here, Jon is one of many area residents to have experienced the holiday in another country and culture.

Photo courtesy of Jon Allen

Germany’s equivalent to Santa Claus is St. Nicholas, who is dressed similarly to a bishop and visits children before Christmas.

Jon, a U.S. Army soldier, had been stationed in Germany since 1984, and served until 1990. He married Mira, a German, in 1986 and the couple lived in that country for 22 years before moving back to Washington in 2010. They now use electric lights for their tree, but have brought back other aspects of their German Christmases.

Mira said in Germany, Christmas Eve holds more religious importance than Christmas Day. She said families there typically wait until Christmas Eve morning to decorate the house and open only a few presents after dinner. She said “the Christ Child” is the focal point of the holiday.

“We do not believe in Santa,” she said. “When I first moved here I thought, ‘Those people are weird.’ For me, it was hard to relate. Your Christmas is very colorful, but in Germany, it’s more religious.”

She said the German equivalent to Santa is St. Nicholas, who is dressed similarly to a bishop and visits children before Christmas to see if they’ve behaved that year.

The Allens said the Christmas tree typically is taken down the second week of January and thrown out a window. The town will then collect all the discarded trees and hold a large bonfire in a field to “frighten off the winter spirits and shorten winter,” Jon said.

Jon said the German holiday is less commercialized than in America. Stores and restaurants all close for the holiday and the decorations are more reserved, with clear lights instead of colorful ones and without seasonal blow-up creatures in the yard. Yet, there are similarities.

“Christmas Day is just like here, because it’s spent with family,” Jon said.

Photo courtesy of Emily Petsko

Emily Petsko, formerly of Fredericktown, stands in front of Christmas decorations in Dapeng, China, on Christmas 2016.

A Christmas not spent with family is something 26-year-old Emily Petsko, formerly of Fredericktown, became familiar with in 2015, after she moved to Vietnam. Like Jon Allen, she too is a Washington County resident who experienced how another culture celebrates Christmas.

“The first couple of holidays were the hardest, with being in a foreign country,” she said.

Petsko moved to Vietnam in July of that year to work in a fellowship program with an English-language newspaper. That Thanksgiving, she contracted dengue fever from a mosquito bite.

“Every other holiday after that seemed amazing compared to that experience,” she said.

Vietnam is a “secular” country, Petsko said, so the only parts of Christmas that are celebrated are the commercial aspects. She said there are plenty of Santa advertisements, shopping mall decorations, parties and dressing up in red clothing.

“You’ll see a lot of Santa suits driving around on motorbikes,” Petsko said. “It felt totally different in some ways. It’s more superficial than what you would get in the U.S.”

This year, Petsko plans to spend Christmas in Hong Kong, where she now is the managing editor of a lifestyles magazine. She said although the holiday is commercialized there, people don’t typically exchange gifts. She said that’s more something they would do for their major holiday, the Lunar New Year.

Petsko said she misses her mother’s cooking over the holidays.

“If you wanted to get a turkey in Hong Kong that would be near impossible because no one has an oven in Hong Kong,” she said. “Ovens are more of a luxury here.”

Whenever she has a chance to connect with American holiday traditions, she takes it.

“If I had the choice, I would spend every holiday in the U.S.,” she said.

That’s not what the Tecklenburgs of Amity chose a few years ago, when they started spending their Christmases scuba diving in the Caribbean.

Photo courtesy of Dorothy Tecklenburg

John and Dorothy Tecklenburg of Amity and their children Sabrina, 22, and J.C., 25, spent time on a Caribbean beach during a recent Christmas vacation.

“My kids were in college and their schedules wouldn’t allow us to go on a summer vacation,” said Dorothy Tecklenburg. “So we started going away over Christmas.”

From 2003 to 2008, the family of four lived in Beijing, China, where her husband, John, was an attorney for Alcoa. She said they would come home to Amity each year for Christmas so that her children, Sabrina, 22, and J.C., 25, would maintain a “connection” to the area.

A few years after they moved back to the states, the family decided that since they didn’t have a lot of family in the area, they would travel together at Christmas. Over the past six years, they’ve spent Christmas in Grand Cayman, Chichen Itza, Cozumel island in Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Belize and a on Caribbean cruise.

“Did I want to sit at home with the crappy weather, or did we want to pet manta rays underwater or ride horses along the ocean?” Dorothy said. “That sounded a lot more fun than baking cookies.”

Mostly, they planned their trips around good diving locations, but they’ve also gone to trapeze school in Puerto Rico during their Caribbean cruise, gone ziplining and received private tours of islands.

“Being on the cruise ship, they had holiday decorations but it really didn’t feel like Christmas at all – just this weird day called Dec. 25,” Dorothy said. “We could make Christmas any day we wanted to, so we decided to make it the day after we got back.”

Upon their return, they celebrate Christmas with a tree, presents, hot chocolate and Christmas music. The only thing they feel they are missing out on is their church’s candlelit Christmas Eve service, Dorothy said.

“Look at the memories we generated rather than memories of the kids sitting around playing video games for three days,” Dorothy said. “Christmas is what you have in your heart and in your family. You can move the day, but you can’t move the feelings.”

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