the twelve days of christmas

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small christmas gathering

when you are far away, you are far away from home. home means people who share your sentiments along the way. home means when you look through the looking glass, all colors and shapes you see are familiar. home is an old ferris wheel which reminds more memories than your porch chair. it's wind, it's blizzards, it's sunshine, it's life.

2006 christmas will be remembered as the year of "mass-a-thone", 3 masses in 24 hours. since I spend most of my time apart from the town I call home in Turkey, I have missed my church buddies. it was a good chance to reconcile. most of them brits, some canadians and americans. some christian turks. a parish of under 30 people, but it's christmas no matter what.

in southern turkey it's mid-40's, sunny, and of course no snow. but it's still christmas.a small tree, carols on tape, some good mozart, and it's over.

I will be on and off the net for the week to come. but do come, because I will be sharing more thoughts on children, squeezed between the west and the east, children of turkey, and their feelings about Santa Claus and new year presents (as they exchange presents on new years' eve here not on christmas day).

Merry Christmas y'all.

christmas joy

counting the time for a little church service for a change. but that is no christmas mood. my readers who are used to the tone and style of this blog may be disappointed, disappointed for a good cause though! I decided (!?!) to be merry for a few days. Take all air in, feel blessed and enjoy, make a few resolutions of my own, and share this sentiment with you, my belowed readers in the form of a little christmas trivia.

many of you enjoy christmas music, I hope. in reality, I do not hope,but I know. since the broad genre we call 'holiday music' comes in many forms and styles, I know there is a christmas song or melody that catches the heart of each.

here I provide my readers a free piece very suitable (in my opinion and taste of course) for the christmas mood. please download and enjoy it using the link provided below. consider it my little christmas gift for all of you. now here's the deal; using the comments link below, tell me the name and the composer of this piece. there will be a random selection on January 2nd, 2007, and the winner will obtain the rights to download the whole album officially.

now be marry, and happy christmas and a healty new year to all my readers.

Download the trivia mp3 here.

christmas blues

mall safety in question. a three years old girl loses her balance, drops down four levels in a mall. she was "hanging out" with her family when she dropped through an opening near an escalator. media questions mall safety in full page editorials. nobody questioning good parenthood.


children playing on suburbian ghetto streets. got hit by cars speeding over 60 miles per hour on city streets. madia calling murder "accidents". drivers speeding over 60 miles per hour on city streets driving $100,000 SUV's getting away with murder.


children, beautiful with dark eyes. on slum street corners. searching for an open window through which the sun may shine one happy day. windows opening into humid lounges. where old scavengers search for their ridiculous destiny. a country where child pornography downloaded through the Internet ranks among the top five where Internet access per capita ranks among the lowest.


christmas blues. where illegal prostitution and $10,000 suits merge. where everyone has something to sell. where everyone craves for purchase. noone knows christmas. noone knows meanings. everything is about who, where, what.


christmas blues. long forgotten church ruins scattered along the city. where noone enters, prays or thinks about them. dwellers of long time now die in los angeles suburbs and return only for burial services. tens of people on the streets aimed for churces sunday mornings in a city of over fifteen million people. and everything that remains to be discussed or recognized is in the eyes of beholder. everything that remains is politics.

children. no schooling available. no family love available. only baren streets of slums to lighten the day. dirt toys, cement stones, iron sticks (reminders of abandoned development sites), and options to improve misery. christmas blues. all around me.

christmas time

ten days to go. in a country where tolerance means tolerance to agreement, freedom of speech means freedom to speak the same language, democracy means freedom to vote for what everyone else votes, the time for controversy arrives.

what is to be celebrated is the name of the argument. new year? noel (christmas)? islamic 'bayram' (religious feast) of offering? this year the 'rumi' calendar of islam and the common gregorian one played a game to remember. within ten days time this year christmas, new year's and 'bayram' coincides. new years day and the first day of bayram, the day when every family is supposed to slaughter a sheep or a cow (sometimes even a camel -see picture below) overlaps the new year's eve. people are supposed to finish shopping for new year's and bayram on saturday, go to sleep, wake up early on sunday, slaughter some animal, cook some of it, distribute the rest among needy, go to the beauty parlor, prepare for new year's festivities, visit close relatives all day long and have fun until the first lights of monday, 1st of January. quite a schedule,isn't it?

the controversy comes when fundamentalists argue that new year's celebrations are of christian origins and therefore are sinful. there is a long time tradition in secular metropolitan Turkey to erect christmas trees and put presents under them to be opened January the 1st. however this tradition, started during the modernization efforts of 40's and 50's, is under severe attack by the ruling forces (both politically and culturally) since the first time political ruling of fundamentalist party mid-90's. within all these arguments though, I have not been able to hear one single person propogating a though such as; "let them be. whoever wants to erect a tree, let them erect whatever they wish. if someone wishes to celebrate christmas (or hannukah for that matter, since the vast majority of 'official' turkish minorities are jews), let them celebrate, whoever wishes to spend the new year's eve in mosques, let them..."

but personallyi I am enjoying a sight totally different from the above arguments since last night. a prestigious shopping mall started displaying their 'new year's' ornaments. it's one of the best I have ever seen here and it is georgeous. the whole building is surrounded by a wall of lights very much like a Russian Orthodox christmas decorations (or should I say architecture).

see it for yourselves and enjoy.