by Ewa Samples | Dec 15, 2011 | Childhood, Food, Holiday, International, Poland, Polish Mom Photographer, Religion, USA, World Moms Blog
In Poland preparations for Christmas are huge. Unlike the U.S., they do not rely on excessive buying gifts for yourselves, or all of your family and friends. They do not rely on competitions of showing off how richly we are able to decorate our house and Christmas tree.
In Poland we decorate our Christmas Tree on the morning of Christmas Eve or the day before. Sometimes, the week before (which is rather a new tradition), but not earlier than that. In Poland we keep the tree up till 6th January – the day when the Three Kings arrived to Bethlehem, but in some homes it is kept longer, sometimes even till the end of the carnival.
On top of the tree Poles usually put a glass star to represent the star which led the Kings to Bethlehem.
Presents are opened after the Christmas Eve meal. It might vary in every household, but in general that’s the rule. Poles teach their kids that christmas gifts are brought by Baby Jesus, Angel, Star (we start our Christmas Eve supper when a first star lights up in the sky), Father Christmas, Grandfather Frost, Saint Nicholas or simply by Santa Claus.
Preparing for Christmas is, above all, a thorough cleaning of the entire house. (more…)
Ewa was born, and raised in Poland. She graduated University with a master's degree in Mass-Media Education. This daring mom hitchhiked from Berlin, Germany through Switzerland and France to Barcelona, Spain and back again!
She left Poland to become an Au Pair in California and looked after twins of gay parents for almost 2 years. There, she met her future husband through Couch Surfing, an international non-profit network that connects travelers with locals.
Today she enjoys her life one picture at a time. She runs a photography business in sunny California and document her daughters life one picture at a time.
You can find this artistic mom on her blog, Ewa Samples Photography, on Twitter @EwaSamples or on Facebook!
More Posts - Website
Follow Me:
by World Moms Blog | Dec 3, 2011 | Childhood, Cooking, Culture, Family, Family Travel, Food, Holiday, Husband, International, Italy, Japan, Kids, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Multicultural, Parenting, Religion, Rox is Brilliant, Salma, Saturday Sidebar, South Africa, Tara B., Toys, Travel, World Motherhood
As the holidays approach, we asked our World Moms Blog writers to…
“…tell us about a holiday/cultural tradition that you are excited
about sharing with your child(ren) this year.”
Check out what some of our World Moms had to say…
Kyla P’an of Massachusetts, USA writes:
“There are two things I get really excited about each year:
1. setting out our family creche. We add one piece each night until Christmas Eve, saving the baby. On Christmas morning, baby Jesus magically appears and the kids get excited about discovering him there.
2. Advent calendars, my mom has devotedly given me an advent calendar every year of my life for the past 39 years and now she sends them to my kids too…this year we have a chocolate one and a Playmobile one to look forward to.” (more…)
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
More Posts
by Kyla P'an (Portugal) | Nov 14, 2011 | Being Thankful, Education, Parenting, Religion
Last week, Tara B. of Washington, USA, wrote a great post about her evolution from Catholicism to agnosticism and what religion has meant as she raises her kids. (If you didn’t read it, you can read it here.) Her post stirred a lot of feelings in me and generated this response.
When I was a child, my family regularly attended church but it wasn’t for the religiosity of it, it was because it was the place to be seen in the affluent, Philadelphia suburb, where we lived. Our Episcopal church was a social network for the well-heeled. Rather than gaining a deep understanding of God and an appreciation for the value of a genuine church community, I viewed church as a place of formalities, where what you gained from coffee hour trumped anything absorbed during the sermon or Sunday School.
I grew to disdain attending church. It felt vapid. Artificial. Insincere.
As a teenager, I began to explore other ways of experiencing spirituality. On the small peninsula in Maine, where I spent summers growing up, there was a walking trail worn into the rocky coast line. Sitting out on those jagged ledges, I often experienced God deeper and closer than I ever did in church and so my church attendance slowed to a trickle.
By the time I got to college—a Presbyterian, Liberal Arts school in the heart of the Bible Belt—I was adamantly anti-church; (more…)
Kyla was born in suburban Philadelphia but spent most of her time growing up in New England. She took her first big, solo-trip at age 14, when she traveled to visit a friend on a small Greek island. Since then, travels have included: three months on the European rails, three years studying and working in Japan, and nine months taking the slow route back from Japan to the US when she was done. In addition to her work as Managing Editor of World Moms Network, Kyla is a freelance writer, copy editor, recovering triathlete and occasional blogger. Until recently, she and her husband resided outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where they were raising two spunky kids, two frisky cats, a snail, a fish and a snake. They now live outside of Lisbon, Portugal with two spunky teens and three frisky cats. You can read more about Kyla’s outlook on the world and parenting on her personal blogs, Growing Muses And Muses Where We Go
More Posts - Website
Follow Me:
by Tara Bergman (USA) | Nov 9, 2011 | Family, Motherhood, Religion, Tara B.
I grew up in a devoted Roman Catholic household, but over time, I have drifted away from the church. I have the utmost respect for all my friends and family who are practicing Catholics, but as I really pondered my own spiritual beliefs and stance on various social issues over the years, I realized that the Catholic Church wasn’t the best fit for me.
To be honest, I lean more toward agnosticism. I believe we are part of something much bigger than ourselves to which we can positively contribute by our words and actions, but I am not sure how I define that “something.” I am a spiritual and moral person, but I don’t feel drawn to formal religion. And I do not want to go through the motions with something if it does not truly resonate with me.
While all of this felt fine for me and my similarly minded husband for years, I started to panic when I became pregnant. Despite my misgivings about certain teachings of (more…)
Tara is a native Pennsylvanian who moved to the Seattle area in 1998 (sight unseen) with her husband to start their grand life adventure together. Despite the difficult fact that their family is a plane ride away, the couple fell in love with the Pacific Northwest and have put down roots. They have 2 super charged little boys and recently moved out of the Seattle suburbs further east into the country, trading in a Starbucks on every corner for coyotes in the backyard. Tara loves the outdoors (hiking, biking, camping). And, when her family isn't out in nature, they are hunkered down at home with friends, sharing a meal, playing games, and generally having fun. She loves being a stay-at-home mom and sharing her experiences on World Moms Network!
More Posts
by Purnima Ramakrishnan | Aug 15, 2011 | Culture, Eye on Culture, Food, Friendship, Holiday, India, Kids, Language, Motherhood, Multicultural, Parenting, Preschool, Religion, The Alchemist, World Events
When I think of my country, India, I am reminded of a small snippet from the collection of poems” Geetanjali” by the world-famous Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
And, on August 15th, 1947 India awoke into that freedom. It was born as a nation, perhaps, for the first time. I say, “first time” here because before British colonization, India was a collection of small kingdoms ruled by individual kings, chieftains and tribes. It was never a single large entity as in a country before this time. Then, after the British left, all of India formed into a single whole country, and I am proud to say we still are. (more…)
by Carol (Canada) | Aug 9, 2011 | Canada, Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Religion
When you are the granddaughter of an Anglican minister and you marry an ardent atheist, religion is one of those things you discuss carefully before you have kids.
The brand of Christianity that I was raised on was very… metaphorical. I wasn’t asked to believe that God was actually a bearded man in a nightgown, or that Adam and Eve were real. My mother taught me that hymns and prayers were simply a way to reach God (whatever God may be) in a way which was familiar and comfortable. It was a matter of tradition and culture as much as belief.
My husband, on the other hand, comes from American parents who rebelled against their own parents’ Bible Belt values. His grandparents believed in the Bible in an extremely literal way which violates his scientific and logical mind. He associates religion with closed-mindedness, homophobia, creationism, racism, and sexism, all of which he detests. (more…)
Carol from If By Yes has lived in four different Canadian provinces as well as the Caribbean. Now she lives in Vancouver, working a full time job at a vet clinic, training dogs on the side, and raising her son and daughter to be good citizens of the world.
Carol is known for wearing inside-out underwear, microwaving yoghurt, killing house plants, over-thinking the mundane, and pointing out grammatical errors in "Twilight". When not trying to wrestle her son down for a nap, Carol loves to read and write.
Carol can also be found on her blog, If By Yes, and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets
More Posts - Website
Follow Me:
