What Christmas means to me this year

A friend recently informed me that there is indeed a War on Christmas. “Oh yes,” she said with the utmost gravitas, “They’re making it very hard for us to celebrate it.”

North Pole swag, Hue, Vietnam

As always I sought to respect the beliefs of others and to offer compassion to those in distress. Wasn’t easy this time. Because as far as I can tell Christmas is the single most dominant and widespread cultural construct in human history. No other holiday, religious or secular, comes close to globalized Christmas. Even New Year’s, a factual necessity of having a calendar, is more diverse and scattered.

If anything Christmas is TOO dominant, having already won its war when it supplanted the midwinter festivals and traditions of the pre-Christian pagan world. I’m pretty sure Christmas can hold its own.

Okay, so sexy wardrobe malfunction
Santa is a little nontraditional...

Or can it? Has modern consumerism killed the Christmas we cherish? Depends on what Christmas means. (And who “we” are.) Does Christmas mean the birth of Jesus? It surely can. Granted, the older tradition says January 6th, but the Bible doesn’t say. It’s religion, not science, so if you say it’s the 25th of December, then that’s true for you. But as long as they don’t delete the 25th from the calendar, skip straight from 24 to 26, you’re pretty safe.

Is it giving gifts to tell your loved ones that you care about them? Another beautiful interpretation. As far as I can tell, a prohibition on buying stuff is the single most unlikely event in our human future. And since no one can tell you what spirit to give with, not much concern here either.

And if Christmas means going around saying “Merry Christmas” to everyone without caring who you’re talking to, then even if that were in danger (which I don’t believe it is) that would be a pretty shallow meaning to the holiday, wouldn’t it?

So maybe Christmas is something more abstract. Deeper. Felt but hard to articulate. That’s the one I’m feeling this mangled freeway wreckage of a year. When democracy failed on the global level and love was defeated on the personal. 2016 feels like one big dark winter right now.

What do you need in the middle of winter? Warmth, light, hope, love. A reminder that winter is a season, and as with everything in life, it passes. But even better, it’s beautiful in itself. The cold and the dark are just more facets of Beauty. It’s the other side of the “Everything shall pass” coin, take solace that the bad will pass, but appreciate the good because it is finite too.

And holy Christmas crapcakes there’s a lot of positive. The world as a whole is still a peaceful place. The human spirit still wants to do no harm, yearns to offer support, and needs to offer love. I’ve certainly got a lot of love in my life. Family and friends, old and new, so many faces of goodness at an individual level.

And loss? What do I do when I remember that this time last year I was in Holland with my lady? The lady who’s no longer mine.

I remember that to focus on the painful end is to forget the joyful entirety. What an incredible thing it is to love! And that relationships don’t always last forever doesn’t invalidate this, it only makes it stronger. What a marvelous gift to have held something so strong and so delicate, so finite yet everlasting.

I sit with that. And the faces of my loved ones. My folks in their new home. My siblings on their paths. My friends at home and abroad. Each of these is a shining point of connection and caring, spread around the world until a map looks like a star chart.

I sit with it. Like a warming fire in the middle of winter. And it feels like Christmas.

Update: nevermind, there's a War on Christmas after all. This was playing on loop. 15th time around. I cut it off before the part where baby noises take over.

Merry Christmas anyway!

Merry Christmas, especially to those apart.

Tonight's not Christmas Eve, tonight's just...Tuesday.

I threw a rueful grin at Miles earlier tonight when that thought occurred to me, adding “That's not a thought I could put in a blog!” After all, people don't want to hear any voices of dissent against Christmas Perfection. (Miles didn't seem to find it funny either, although it's hard to tell, cats have a awfully dry sense of humor.)

But I can laugh at that, because I have my Christmas this year, last weekend with most of the family, and I'll spend some time tomorrow with a couple of the ones who weren't there. But tonight? For me, tonight was a bowl of pasta I made (good enough for me but I wouldn't put it on this last weekend's table), and a movie on Netflix for me and Miles.

(We watched the last Mission: Impossible movie, Ghost Protocol or whatever, and agreed with a friend's review “It's good and funny in that over-the-top way, though only Tom Cruise seems to not realize it's a joke.”)

So I can laugh, not bitter or sad (much) about being alone tonight, but there are two notes I want to add. First: if you are with family, appreciate it. Yes, they drive you nuts as only family can, but you'd probably miss them if they weren't there, and they would miss you. (Do I need to add a disclaimer against an implicit assumption of the universality of an ostensibly Christian holiday? It's a symbol, people, stop fighting.)

But second, a bit more vital to me, I want to wish a very Merry Christmas to all of those people who are apart tonight. I'm sure there are more than we realize, some for work, some for reasons I can't imagine, but the ones close to my heart are the travelers. Hopefully most of them are finding happy evenings in crowded hostels, perhaps even a fraction as good as the one I had in Rome in 2008...

But there are some of you, undoubtedly, alone tonight. I don't want to be a bummer here, and hopefully you remember that everything is temporary, and these circumstances will change. So appreciate them now, learn the lessons there, and have this memory to revisit later. Maybe it will make a good story.

If it turns out you prefer holidays alone, that's fine, that's your right, far be it from me to reproach anyone. But if you find, perhaps surprisingly, that you miss your family, then hold on to that, and let it mean more when you come Home, more aware of what that word means than you were when you left.

And to those of you who are missing someone... That pain comes from love, and that's always something to be thankful for. And/even if all circumstances change.

Anyway. To everyone, idyllic families around the fire, people fighting and squabbling about stupid shit, playing Scrabble or whatever you do: Merry Christmas. And to those who are away, who are separate, who find themselves apart tonight: Merry Christmas.

A lesson learned in the worst supermarket on Earth.

Some friends did me a favor the other day. They asked my opinion.

Everyone loves to feel like an expert, and travelers may be the worst of all. But I am leery of trying it, because I am vaguely aware of how much I don’t know, and because most people sound like pretentious jackasses while they expound on their expertise. (“I had a two hour layover in Dubai three years ago…let me tell you what the Middle East is like…they’re so organized! They like everything to be nice and orderly, A1, A2, A3, that sort of thing…”)

But I was surrounded by friends, and tales were flowing like the hard alcohol none of us drink anymore, so I indulged.

They were asking about Europe, 27 of whose countries I’ve visited (29 if you count Vatican City and Monaco) and I found myself recommending, as my secret #1 pick: Slovenia.

The capital, Ljubljana, is a friendly place of details, history, and local character which I would describe as “quaint” if I didn’t hate that word so much. Plus have you ever seen a word more fun to say? I’ll wait while you practice a few more times. Make sure to really get that “lyuh” sound. Lyooblyana.

Coastal Slovenian city of Piran, after a truly epic storm

It’s not as expensive as its western and northern neighbors, but is more developed and luxurious than much of Eastern Europe. There are trees, caves, and the coast is absolutely gorgeous.

At the time I thought nothing of it, but just now I was putting away laundry and I noticed the little glass tea-light candle holder I bought in Ljubljana and never gave away. And suddenly I remembered…

I was miserable in Ljubljana.

My time in Ljooobljaaana (calm down) stands out as one of the two lowest points of that first long trip, which are probably my worst moments on the road to date. (Knock on wood.)

It was cold, I didn’t have the proper gear, and I’d spent two days trying to win over a Czech cutie who turned out to be hung up on some dude in Prague whom she admitted was a total jerk. Those three things were actually fairly par for the course, but what really made me miserable was the timing.

I was standing in the deli section of a basement supermarket, deciding whether to have spaghetti again or splurge on some runny goulash, when it hit me.

It was Thanksgiving.

Somehow the fact of being there, surrounded by people who had no idea it was my favorite holiday of the year, so far from my family, and deciding what to eat on another lonely night in a grungy hostel…

 

Have you ever cried in the supermarket? In a foreign country? I hid in the pasta section while I tried to stop. It took awhile.

But there I was last weekend, recommending Slovenia and its capital as among my very favorite places, not even remembering that damn supermarket. Because sadness passes. Because we remember both happy and sad things, but can choose to spend more energy on the former.

And because I just spent Christmas with my family.

K was not there, and nor was her family, who I feel are part of my own, but I can see the sadness of that, accept it, feel it, and focus on the happiness of seeing all my siblings gathered in one place for the first time in 4 years. Watching my parents hand out presents, and all of us immediately knowing they’re socks.

So yes, Ljubljana is one of my favorite places. So is Monterey, California. So is Antwerp Province, Belgium. There’s happiness in all of them. I can focus on that.

Holiday Progress

My first blog was going to be called “A Year Without Holidays” because I spent the holiday season of 2008 abroad, traveling away from home and family, and I felt like those holidays weren’t real ones, basically just more expensive hostel dorm rooms.  (Not exactly my real sentiment, but it’ll do for now.)

This year I am still abroad, but no longer travelling, and I found my holidays.

I spent Thanksgiving 2008 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and although it is still one of my favourite places, that day I was standing in a basement grocery store, deciding if splurging on goulash was worth it or whether to go with basic spaghetti again, when suddenly I realized I was far from home and family, surrounded by people who had no idea it was even a holiday (for me anyway) and I was choosing between shitty goulash and boring spaghetti on Thanksgiving.  And it sucked.  It was no longer fun.  I stood in front of that damn counter, fighting the water in my eyes while I ordered goulash I no longer wanted (and ended up forgetting in the hostel fridge).

It was one of the two lowest moments of my trip, I think of my adult life in general, and I was not looking forward to Christmas.  Life is a tricky bastard though, and that Christmas I met Katrien, the woman I now live with in a snow-buried studio apartment Belgium.

So this year, I spent Thanksgiving back in the States with my family.  And Christmas will be here with hers.  And although I still basically missed Halloween (it’s not very popular here…yet) I had my first Sinter Klaas, the Belgian tradition where an old white-bearded guy with elf helpers brings presents to kids.  Except he has nothing to do with Christmas, is rake thin, sails up from his home in Spain, and his elves would be inadmissible in America since they are basically in blackface, “Black Pete” being the chief among them, face blacked by the soot of your chimneys.  (I particularly like that he lives in Spain.  I have a mental image of when that detail was added, some kid asking “Daddy, where does Sinter Klaas live?”  The dad frowning for a second, “shit, I dunno…um…Spain?  Yeah, Sinter Klaas lives in Spain, son.”)

And New Years here involves carolling and something like trick-or-treating but without the tricks and costumes, going house to house singing and giving treats and hot drinks.

And even more!  This year I will spend (weather permitting) New Years Eve in Scotland, where that day is Hogmanay, whose roots go back to Norse winter solstice rituals and incorporate Gaellic elements of Samhain, with local customs varying from throwing fireballs into the harbour in Stonehaven to carrying decorated herring (yes, the fish) in Dundee.  The most common tradition though is “first footing” also known by its more charistmatic Gaelic name “quaaltagh”, where the first person to cross a house’s threshold sets the luck for the year.  The first-footer (I’m not making that term up) often brings symbolic gifts like a coin (prosperity), salt (flavor), bread (food…not exactly symbolic, that one), coal (warmth), or alcohol (good cheer…cuz that’s how Scots roll) and is in turn given food and a hot drink.

So in 2008, Halloween was sadly forgotten, Valentine’s Day (happily) ignored, and Thanksgiving a new low of crapitude.  But in 2010 I got my Thanksgiving turkey, Sinter Klaas put gingerbread and marzipan in my shoe, and maybe I can first-foot our hostel on Hogmanay.  If two years ago was the year without holidays, then this is the year of twice as many.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Fijne Kerstdagen en een Gelukkige Nieuwjaar!

And what the hell: Feliz Navidad y un Próspero Año Nuevo too!