Finally starting to feel like Christmas

It has taken me awhile to get in the Christmas spirit here in Brussels.  I think we all have our ideas on what Christmas should be like or look like and I am no different. Being from Minnesota I expect to see snow outside, Christmas lights and wreaths in the malls in my home and around the neighborhood. As expected this Christmas season has been a little different, but the last week has certainly made it feel more like the holidays. We finally started seeing some snow in the last week. Not the white fluffy kind that makes everything pretty, but more of the wet rainy kind that sticks around for a night and is gone by the morning (if it even makes it till the morning). I'll take what I can get, it just doesn't feel like winter without snow.

I've also started to see Christmas lights around the city and the shopping areas. I've noticed a couple things about retail here. There is maybe one or two malls in Brussels, generally there are big shopping streets and of course the Christmas markets. The other thing about retail around here is that the Christmas push doesn't start until much later than in the States. In the States it starts right after Halloween, even more so the day after Thanksgiving. There is no Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc, I've only started seeing big pushes this past week. Even though the timing is a little late the amount of the Christmas lights in the streets and shopping area more than make up for it. There are Christmas trees and decorations everywhere.

Christmas Tree in Grand Place

Light show at the Grand Place

Grand Place

 We of course went to the Christmas markets here in Brussels as well. They had this huge ferris wheel that we had to go on. It had great views of the market, you could see all off the shops and the ice skating rink. It started to snow/rain while we were on it so our photos aren't great but it was still a lot of fun.

The view from the Ferris wheel

It started snowing/raining as we were on the Ferris Wheel

The Christmas market also had two of the best merry-go-rounds I have ever seen. These weren't your typical horses going round and round type of merry-go-round, they instead had a Pegasus, airplanes, lizards and one had a space ship that went through the roof of the carousel. If I were a kid I would have been out of my mind excited.

You can actually sit inside of this

You sit inside the spaceship and it goes through the top of the carousel

To end this post I'm going to share the holiday lesson that Steve and I learned this past weekend. Most of us have been to these holiday parties that include ugly sweaters or white elephant gifts. We all know that both of these traditions are ridiculous and just for fun. The uglier the sweater or the more ridiculous the gift the better. We were invited to a "white elephant gift" party this weekend. It was a lots of fun and we met some great people, however I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't get invited back. When we heard that we were suppose to bring a white elephant gift we went to the market and found ridiculous kind of tacky items. Steve's gift was a bear key holder with the peg in the most inappropriate spot, mine was a small wooden tray with little cats on it. These items were the wrong choice.

Everybody drew numbers and opened wrapped gifts in order. As people started opening gifts we realized that many (most) people didn't quite understand the White Elephant gift idea and had actually brought really nice gifts. We sat a little bit mortified as we watched people were opening nice boxes of chocolates, beer and jams. We felt ridiculous, and when one of the guests opened Steve's gift you could tell she was thinking WTH? Oh,  it was embarrassing. Luckily we didn't share who brought what, but I'm sure they knew it was us. So lesson learned some traditions just don't translate.