I love Christmas time in Latvia. Here, because of the winter and the whole darkness issue it has so much more meaning to me than it ever had in Australia. For me, Christmas is a whole bustling month of light and brightness, anticipation and tradition, as we await the shortest day of the year and welcome the sun back to our lives.

It starts some time in early December, when yellow sparkly Christmas lights start appearing in shop windows, brightening the walk home in afternoons when night falls before you finish work. Christmas markets begin to be set up in the old town, clusters of little wooden booths selling trinkets and other knick knacks. When you walk past you can smell mulled wine. Often in December there is the first proper snow fall and the fir trees in the park match the other Christmas trees set up around the city.

The kids wake up excited every morning, eager to see what the advent calendar has in store for them. Every supermarket sells an arry of ready-to-bake gingerbread dough, and we bake gingerbread (Latvian piparkūkas) often, the house filling with their spicy aroma. This year we even attempted a gingerbread house, which was moderately successful.

We spend Christmas eve at Kūgures. In the morning we go to the forest and pick a tree - always much harder than it sounds. This year it was no mean feat on account of the snow. We spent some time wading through snow drifts, for the boys up to their waists, and then abandoned the search to Jem. He came back with a fine specimen! The amount of snow at Kūgures was unbelievable, and after my family had "made it in", we basically barricaded ourselves in and spent the next two days celebrating indoors, which was wonderful. Everyone was together, sitting around, examining/playing with their presents, eating good food, playing cards, talking.