12 drunk Nepalis, 11 secret santas, 10 egg McMuffins, 9 random children, 8 plates of dal bhat, 7 sneaky-entirely-exposed-showers-under- an-outside-tap, 6 mince pies gone missing, 5 bags of crisps, 4 hours sleeping, 3 buffaloes, 2 goats a‘ fighting and a bamboo Christmas tree.

Christmas was unconventional to say the least – however we were imbued with a Christmas miracle… a 14kg, gold spray painted, boxed shaped miracle. Joe’s very generous ‘Granny and Grandad’ (“it’s not my f🤭king Nan”) had sent him an enormous parcel exclusively filled with a Morrison’s haul to put the average Christmas shopping cart to shame. There were Walker’s sensations, mince pies, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, onion rings, cheese puffs, celebrations, sherbet lemons, chocolate covered fruit and nuts, jelly sweets, Bournville and enough Lindor chocolates that Joe could not face one more by Boxing Day. Throughout the day Joe consisted delivered rounds of treats to us, ensuring we all respected our gluttonous culture and holiday.
Nepal is heavily Hindu and few people in Neta had even heard of Christmas or knew nothing of it besides the name. Unsurprisingly, leading up to Christmas we got regular inquires into why we had a tree adorned with ribbons in our room, especially since in our festive spirit, we over estimated the height of our tiny room and were perhaps over ambitious in our tree selection. Our teachers, kids and locals found our tree very amusing (although I think our host was hinting when she asked us on December 27th if Christmas was over and how much longer would we keep the tree up). To match our non-pine tree, we made ourselves an advent calendar from air mail envelopes and a wide assortment of Nepali sweets. This led us to trying many more Nepali sweets some, such as dried dates, peanut rice crispie bars and coconut balls were successful – the floor cleaner flavoured ‘strawberry’ lollipops or masala sweets not so much. Also our hosts eldest daughter, who is at university in a city, very kindly brought us a bag of English chocolate (dairy milk, kitkats, mini snickers, etc.) which definitely spiced up the final days running up to Christmas. Although mum kindly sent us each a real advent calendar, we only got them by December 20th when our handmade calendar was well into our English bounty. However we found a new use for them as there are exactly 25 days between Christmas and Selin’s birthday.

We spent Christmas Day in Puja, a village about a four hour walk from us in Neta. We were joined by seven volunteers from our neighbouring district, Baglung (who had to trek two days to reach Puja) and the two boys who volunteer in Puja. Selin and I met the Baglung volunteers on Christmas Eve, in Aglung Phedi, a ‘town’ (e.g. it has about 15 shops) about an hours walk from Neta. We all stoped at some friends of ours for chow mein who were very excited that we’d delivered on our promise to bring seven white people to their restaurant. After some final last minute secret santa and vegetable purchases we were on our way to Puja. Arriving in Puja at about three o’clock we met Joe and Gray (the Puja volunteers) at their school, causing significant disturbance to their ‘activity time’. After duck duck goose, what’s the time mister wolf and a wonderful rendition of the Nepali national anthem by Gray’s class supposedly reading quietly in the library school ended. The Puja teachers very kindly prepared a celebration for us of either egg or goat with rice crispies (they aren’t sweetened here and replace rice at special occasions) and Mountain Dew (Nepali style) or roxy (basically Nepali moonshine). We brought along Christmas cake from Joe’s parcel which the teachers enjoyed.

We spent the evening eating fake Nutella out the jar and playing games whilst we sent Fergus out with his knife to secure us a tree (the Puja boys clearly neglected their roles as hosts) – Fergus brought us a stick of bamboo. After an excellent dal bhat, we held midnight mass around a bonfire in the buffalo field. After hours of renditions of hark the herald, silent night, away in a manger and jingle bells our numbers dwindled as people drifted to bed (especially the Baglung vols who has been walking days on very little sleep). Once down to the final six we declared ourselves each deserving of a mince pie.
Christmas morning arrived with the melody the Red Priest’s voice from out the window. The Red Priest is an iconic member of Puja. We are not entirely sure where the name originated, something to do with the temple he has in his house, however he is a very friendly man. When Selin and I last visited him in Puja we were roped into making a nine minute Nepali music video for two hours but since his tastes have changed. With his acquisition of a microphone, the Red Priest took to recording interviews with us on Christmas morning consisting of questions such as our dietary requirements and opinions of Puja.
After this excitement subsided and a trip to the shop for 20 eggs, a chef team commenced whipping up 20 egg McMuffins with roti and fried eggs. Whilst we waited Fergus produced a carrier bag filled with chocolates they’d purchased on the way to which Joe added a packet of Lindors. After sitting out in the sun enjoying these (Selin and I in our matching Christmas pyjamas) we assembled the troops for secret santa.
We then spent most of the day in the buffalo field in the sun, eating crisps, chocolates and nuts whilst doing henna and listening to music. As we very rarely see each other whenever we do it invariably turns into a long catch up. At some point we lost Joe and Hector to the Red Priest’s house while he made them dress up for a second interview (they returned with amazing videos) and Selin to a random student’s house whom she met the day before at school. Realising it was already nearly five, we collected firewood and built a bonfire.

We began writing famous people to play the ‘who am I?’ hat game but were interrupted by a bunch of Nepalis confused as to why we weren’t dancing. Nepali celebrations are almost exclusively dancing and they didn’t understand how we could be spending our festival sat down. To please them we performed the Cha Cha Slide and The YMCA – think this confused them more.
As more Nepalis joined the party and Hector, Katie and I prepared chow mein for everyone. Our restaurant was a reasonable success with one report of it was tasty from a kid and one report of it lacking salt from an adult. The perk of our restaurant was in that all our customers washed their own plates before returning them, however the con was in our spoon shortage meaning most ate noodles with their hands.

Eventually the Nepalis went home, although not before some grievous mishandling of Fergus had occurred by Joe and Gray’s extremely drunk host mother and we settled down toasting marshmallows.
We all left at lunchtime on Boxing Day as Selin and I had school on Friday whilst the others had to be back by Saturday for school on Sunday. Most of the Baglung volunteers came on a detour to Neta to spend a night – fitting seven in our very cosy room was a struggle but it all worked out.
Although Christmas felt strange, not having be bombarded with Christmas music for the preceding two months, no grisly English rain nor stockings, crackers and about a million other small parts of Christmas, it was a really lovely day.