Think about how you celebrate Christmas. “Ahh,” you say, brimming with nostalgia, murmuring sweet nothings about lights, gifts, trees, family, warmth, food, crackling fireplaces, homemade hot cocoa, and ...oh, yeah, Jesus.

Now imagine Christmas without family. No tree or crackling fireplace. A few strings of lonely lights. Gifts wrapped with care by the US Postal Service may or may not have arrived in time. Swiss Miss cocoa, with little undissolved chunks. And although Kellogg, Brown, and Root did their dead-level best to truck in a good attempt at a feast via Karachi through the Khyber Pass or the Chaman crossing, it doesn’t exactly do justice to Mom’s sweet potatoes, Dad’s turkey-carving, or my wife’s pie and homemade cranberry dressing.

I’m not complaining - I really did have a good Christmas. But the stripped-down version helped bring into sharp focus what we celebrate. It’s the Christ-Mass. We met on Christmas Eve in the little FOB chapel for carols, readings from the gospels, and the completion of the Advent wreath, the lighting of the Christ candle, and from it, all of our candles. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.” Standing room only. Pretty awesome.

On Christmas morning, we got up to perform that peculiar American holiday activity: group endurance sports! The 4.25 mile Christmas morning FOB run included standout participants such as Santa Claus and two jogging penguins. It was below freezing at the starting line, but was still well-attended. I grabbed a quick shower and opened my gifts from Mom (thanks for the comforter and dark chocolate, Mom!), then joined my hospital compatriots for Christmas dinner.

After a postprandial nap, Dr. L and I strolled around the FOB doing some sightseeing. We found the 155-mm howitzer crew, who showed us the “gun” and the 95-pound high explosive shells. Talk about modern warfare...no more compasses and plotting and angle calculations. With the coordinates calculated by compters, these babies can lob that shell like Roger Clemens hitting you in the head with a baseball from a mile away...every ten seconds! I don’t know what the qualifications are for that crew, but they clearly have much bigger biceps than me, as heavy as those shells are.

After a quick supper (leftovers from lunch, just like back home!) I headed to my Pashto class, a free Army educational offering at the learning center here. Our (Muslim) instructor graciously began, “Merry Christmas to you all. I understand that this is a holiday that you would like to spend with your families, but you’re not able to be with them today because you are here helping our government, and so I thank you for that.” Then we dove into how to tell time, names for family members, and an explanation of Muslim holidays. "Six-thirty." "Spagh niemay baje." Right now I’ve got enough on my hands just getting the spoken language down. I’ll tackle the written Arabic script if I ever attain some level of speaking proficiency.

And that’s my Christmas. Hope yours was well.