I couldn’t imagine Christmas without the rich flavours of cinnamon, cloves, apple, orange and lemon, simmered and blending for hours in the slow cooker, filling our home with a  wonderfully rich smell. Our Apple Cider.

Neither could Brian, that’s why he agreed to run out on the morning of Christmas Eve, to buy the ingredients. While I’m used to brewing the apple cider for up to six hours I’m not used to it taking six hours to buy the ingredients!

He left the house at 10 am, eager to return home and help prepare for our Christmas Eve party but didn’t return until the guests had already arrived and our table was overflowing with delectable treats.

It wasn’t the Christmas rush that kept Brian away almost the whole day on Christmas Eve, we don’t experience that here. It was something quite unexpected. His shopping had gone smoothly and his drive home was going well too, until he rounded a corner, onto a small bridge just two blocks from our home, and collided with a car that was driving over the bridge in the wrong direction!

Yes, you read that right, driving the wrong direction!

Since the accident was just a few blocks from our home I was able to run out and see how he was. Thankfully, no one was injured. I wasn’t the only one to show up to assess the damage, agents from both insurance companies and two policemen were there. Our insurance company even brought along a Santa Claus and the common Chinese Christmas Eve gift of a wrapped apple!

In Chinese, Christmas Eve is called Ping An Ye, meaning the Evening of Peace, which comes from the first line of the well-known carol Silent Night.

Since the Ping is the same as the first syllable of apple (ping guo) people give gifts of fancily wrapped apples stencilled with a picture or message. When given as a gift it is called, Ping An Guo, fruit of peace. Well in this case it was the fruit of a car accident.

Since our insurance company is called Ping An (Peace) Insurance, they took the opportunity to give us this specific gift. I wish I could appreciate their thoughtfulness but I’ve been in China long enough to think that it means our white faces will probably end up on the cover of their next brochure!

As the thinnest Santa I have ever seen drove away, I got our apple juice from the trunk, so once Brian had dealt with insurance companies, taken the car somewhere to be fixed and was finally able to return home, he was greeted not only by festive friends and a table full of holiday treats, but also by the wonderful aroma of fragrant six hour cider!