Holidays From Hell

It is a paradox that one of the nicest things about moving from country to country is also one of the greatest headaches: holidays.

Now, I don't want to sound like a spoilsport, but holidays, for all that they are loads of fun, are also a big pain in the neck and, for some reason, seem to be viewed in our family as my own particular responsibility. For quite some time, I was dumb enough to play along with this, then something snapped. Last year, I left our Christmas tree up until Easter, when the rest of the household decided that they had better things to do than help me take it down. I called their bluff and they called mine, and by March, none of us could bear to go into what we began to call 'the Christmas room'. It helped that we were living in a large Victorian flat at the time and had more than one lounge. It also helped that the tree, for all that it posed a fire risk, smelled great and ended up burning beautifully in our wood-burning stove. But I can't say I was proud.

In Japan, the kids were eager to have it all. Japan has a whole lot of holidays and their friends at nursery school, then elementary school, celebrated them, so we had to as well; our kids stood out enough as it was, and we hardly wanted to give them another reason to be different.

"You didn't get to have shichi-go-san, did you?" one little girl said to our eldest daughter when she was five, "'cause you're a foreigner." Shichi-go-san is a traditional rite of passage celebrated in mid-November for little girls who are three and seven years old; boys usually only get to do it once, when they are five.

"Oh yes I did!" Eldest retorted, and the next day, she took in a photograph of her little blonde self fully kitted out in a kimono. This exchange was witnessed by two nursery teachers who gleefully reported that the little Japanese girl, upon being shown this, immediately said, "Gosh, you really are Japanese! I'm sorry I called you a foreigner!"

Getting Eldest dressed in that damn kimono took half an age, and making sure she didn't mess it up later when we took her out for the obligatory fancy meal and walk around the town, was a hassle of massive proportions. But her little friend's reaction made it all worth while, and even to this day, we love looking at the photographs.

We did them all. We cleaned the house for shogatsu, New Year's Day; on February the 3rd, we put on devil masks and chanted "Bad out, good in!" as we scattered beans out the door for setsubun, to mark the beginning of spring. On March the 3rd, we celebrated girls' day, on May the 5th we celebrated boys' day, and every summer we wrote out wishes on colored paper to decorate for Tanabata, the star festival. (I felt so ashamed of our family's wishes; they must have sounded so pathetically simple, laboriously written out, as they were, with the help of a dictionary.) We were let off the hook during Obon, the Buddhist summer festival during which everyone goes to visit the graves of their ancestors, but every September, before taiiku no hi, or 'sports day', we were forced to endure all-day sports events at our kids' nursery and elementary schools. Not realizing how important these were, we skipped the first one when Eldest was a year old and were roundly told off for it. If I could add up all the time I've sat on the hard ground and watched several hundred kids vault, jump rope, race around a ring, and run relays carrying potatoes on spoons, I'd have quite a tidy bit of time there. Wish I could, too.

Now, I freely admit that I can be lazy. And what I've described here may not sound like a lot. But when you factor in Valentines' Day (also celebrated in Japan, though women give men chocolate there), Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and birthdays, this is a hefty bunch of holidays to plan for and clean up after. And guess who got stuck with the brunt of the work?

When we moved to Scotland and the kids still wanted to celebrate Japanese holidays, I did the best I could. I put out our dolls on Girls' Day and nagged the kids to write messages for Tanabata too, though we never managed to find any bamboo to hang them on. On one Boys' Day, I made sushi, and I scrubbed the house from top to bottom for Shogatsu. After a while, I'll admit it: I gave up. And boy, it felt great.

So far, the holidays here have been easy-going affairs and I couldn't be more pleased. Seker Bayram, to mark the end of Ramadan fasting, was no big deal and I even got a free cake out of it. Kurban Bayram was the next holiday, and involved no work for me at all. Christmas went by in a flash -- our car's repairs ate up all our holiday money and spared me having to do anything with a Christmas tree -- and for New Year's, I popped corn, my husband had a beer, and hey, presto, 2009 had been shown in in style.

Then last week, it happened.

"Know what day it is today?" Acquired Daughter asked innocently. And I froze: January 25th -- Burns Night!

Scotland doesn't have a lot of holidays, but this is one that cannot be skipped: Robert Burns' birthday. Back in Scotland, we celebrated Burns' Night in style at my friend Dina's, with the traditional haggis, a sheep's stomach stuffed with offal, onions, oatmeal, and spices, and boiled until palatable (for those who are prepared to eat it, at least). We also feasted on the other indispensable Burns' Night components: mashed potatoes -- 'tatties' as they are called -- turnips, or 'neeps' -- and whiskey. My friend Dina loves holidays and never scrimps or wimps out on celebrations. She would have done splendidly in Japan.

Now Acquired Daughter does not ask for a lot. She finds our weird mixture of nationalities amusing and she puts up well with all of our family's weirdness. But she is 100% Scottish and with her in the family, there was no way we could not celebrate Burns' Night. And just you try describing haggis to a monolingual Turkish butcher sometime and tell me how well you manage.

We did the best we could. Acquired Daughter pretended that the kofta -- Turkish meatballs -- tasted just as good as haggis, and even I enjoyed the mashed potatoes, turnips, and package of Scottish shortbread.

But best of all, my husband cooked the whole thing.