Dorsa with the meal she prepared for Christmas
Photo by: Saeid Ghiassi
My First Christmas in Denver
Reader submission from Dorsa Ghiassi (age 11) from Denver, CO
My name is Dorsa. I am Iranian. I am now living in Colorado, Denver. I had already lived in Vancouver for 2 years. This is my first Christmas in Denver, Colorado.
I decided to make a Christmas dinner all by myself. I went shopping to buy food for our dinner. I was going to buy a small turkey for three people: myself, my dad and my mom. But I found out that the smallest turkey would serve about 12 people! So I thought that instead of baking a huge turkey, I would bake chicken with vegetables. I would bake chicken with vegetables, Christmas cookies and pumpkin tarts which my friend Nancy taught me how to cook.
I made pumpkin tarts. I was so sure how to bake the tarts that I didn’t look at the recipe! So I poured 5 tablespoons of sugar instead of 3! My tarts became super sweet. After Nancy sent the recipe again, I thought that this is the reason that my tarts were over-sweet.
I had an idea for the gifts that we bought for each other. We hid the gifts and we decided that everyone should go and find their own gift. It was so exciting. No one found their gift!!!
We didn’t buy a tree because the apartment that we are now living in is not our permanent home. We just rented it. My parents thought that it would be hard to carry the tree after because we will have another move later on. We didn’t decorate our apartment. We will next year!
I am not Christian. I am Muslim. But I just want to try to know how it feels to celebrate Christmas. And it felt really good. Luckily my dinner was fantastic. My cookies were good, my chicken was good, just my tarts weren’t good!
I heard that the night before Christmas if you get snow you will have a great year and Denver did get snow the night before Christmas!
This was the story of my Christmas.