Christmas, part 2

Usually Christmas anxiety starts to get me a week before Christmas but this year it started in early October. 

Understandable if you take into consideration that Christmas talks with my girlfriend started in late June.

I have never been a fan of that holiday and in the last couple of years I had the opportunity to opt out of it. That will be impossible this year and I don't want to, but I still feel a bit queasy when I start thinking about it. 

In order for you to understand my Christmas dislike i need to explain a bit of Croatian culture. Families in Croatia are very tightly nit and so was mine. Both mine and my ex-wife family live in Zagreb which made seeing each other very easy and it was quite often. My parents would crash at our place every Sunday and we would see her family once in 2 weeks, plus we would talk around twice a week. That was standard through the year. Visits often included lunches or we would just hang out with a coup of coffee or some drinks. In addition birthdays were celebrated as well, all of them, and those were considered as special occasions. Birthdays required something extra; lunch, dinner, booze etc. And then Christmas arrived and we would be bombarded with questions which Christmas lunch are we going to attend. 

What always confused me with Christmas, in a Croatian cultural surrounding was; why all the pressure! Why do I HAVE go to Christmas lunch with any of our families? Have we not seen each other within last 14 days more then once? Shall we not keep the tempo of seeing each other at least once every 14 days? What does make that day soooo different from other days of the year that not seeing your family on that day necessarily results in complete and utter disaster. It is the end of the world as we know it?

Some years later my German friend explained to me what is the deal with Christmas. His parents live in the norther Germany, his brother in western Germany and my friend lives in eastern Germany. He sees his family couple of times per year and Christmas is one of the few holidays when all of them know they will be free and not working. When he told me this the first time it was a Eureka moment for me. Well, ofc! In that setup Christmas makes total sense. You know all of you will be free and you haven't seen them in a while, so it is a happy occasion. After I moved to Denmark time with my family is much more valuable then it was before. Now I have the time to miss them!

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/4892592/images/o-CHRISTMAS-GIFTS-facebook.jpg

Second thing I never grasped with Christmas in general is the presents frenzy. My view of Christmas, in which I had problems fitting myself in, is spending a cozy time with your family and a part of that is gift giving. The purpose of giving presents should be to make someone happy with a gift as a token of appreciation. It should be a happy occasion, both buying/making a present and receiving it. When it turns into bickering about what should be the budget cap for presents, who should buy presents for who and what not, at that point I think that the purpose of whole gift giving for Christmas is misunderstood. 

Think about it, if you take a holiday that should be about spending cozy time with your family and you turn it into stressing over what you should buy to whom for what price, you stress over the event in general, you think about it for the greater part of the year, then I think you are doing something wrong. You knocked out all the spontaneity and coziness out of Christmas.

I don't think I will ever buy into that holiday. Fortunately it is only once per year in the darkest part of the year, so at least it doesn't destroy a nice sunny day.

I wonder if there is more of you out there who share my thoughts? P.S. I like the Christmas decorations :D