A Christmas Carol
How do you know it's getting close to Christmas? It's not that cold yet and it hardly ever snows during Christmas. So how do i notice the holiday season has started? First thing that gives it away is the decoration in shops. You can buy fake snow out of a can earlier each year. But i'm not bothered about that. I just skip the Christmas-section in shops. There is something that surprises me every year though.
I came home from work a few weeks ago (it was about the 24th of november) when i was blinded by the first signs of christmas. I know this is a celebration of light (at least it was in the old days) but this is ridiculous! People turn their homes into circus attractions. How you can find peace in your heart when there are hundreds of flickering coloured lights in your window is beyond me.
Not only does it look terrible, this insanity starts earlier each year too. I've been told that it's an American custom to start decorating the day after Thanksgiving. Well i can understand that, but we are in the Netherlands here. It's a shame to see our own traditions die because of all the American influences. In the Netherlands it used to be not done to start decorating before Sinterklaas. Now i never liked this guy and his celebration, i guess having a foreign mum who wasn't familiar with the customs didn't help that either, but it has it's charm and i see a lot of kids enjoying it.
All this made me think about how we celebrated Christmas and it makes me sad that my kids will never know the excitement i felt and celebrated like i did, no matter how hard i'll try. Because Christmas is all around them for a month before Christmas already. I would love to give them at least one Christmas like mine, just one.
The ghost of Christmas past
First let me tell you that i don't really know how other dutch people celebrated Christmas, because my mum is from Austria and we spend lots of Christmases there. I guess living in a very small village on a mountain, surrounded by forests adds to that special Christmas feeling.
We kids knew it was getting closer to Christmas when the whole house started to smell like freshly baked cookies, but the excitement about all that snow was still stronger than the excitement about the coming of Christmas. My brother and i spend all day outside with my cousins, playing in the snow. Getting all cold and wet without even noticing. Our favorite thing was bobsledding down the mountain, which lasted about a minute, after which we had to climb up again for over half an hour. But it was worth it. The speed, the thrill, the victory!
Then it became the 24th of december. The evening before Christmas. In Austria and a lot of other Celtic countries (Austria isn't Celtic anymore, but there are lots of findings that show there used to be Celts in Austria) people start celebrating the night before. It was only when i learned more about Celts and Paganism that i knew why. To the Celts the new day starts at sundown, not at midnight.
Anyways, back to the 24th. The day before Christmas and except for the scent of cookies and the sound of Christmas carols, there was still no sign of Christmas. This day was different than the others before though. We kids weren't allowed in certain rooms anymore, to prevent scaring away das Christkindl.
Then when evening came we all had dinner in my grandmothers kitchen. When we were kids, all my mum's family was living in the same village, they all were neighbours in fact. Except for one aunt and uncle, they lived in Vienna but had a weekend apartment there. So it was very easy to get all of us together in one big celebration. After dinner, still at the table, we all sang together. Well, the adults sang, we kids started to get very nervous now. "Will das Christkindl find us here?", "Did we leave a window open so he could get in?", "Isn't he too scared with all the adults singing this loud? Or was he already here but didn't we hear him?". When this is going through your head, it's kind of hard to concentrate on songs...
Then all of a sudden, we heard a little bell coming from upstairs (our floor, my granny was on ground floor and we were on the second floor). Imagine six kids running up wooden stairs as fast as they can, all trying to be the first to get in the room. When the door opened, we saw our Christmas tree for the first time, with lighted sparklers and the window slightly open because we were too fast for the Christkidl to close it. We just missed him again!
Then we started unpacking our gifts. Every family had gifts for the whole family, and because neither of us had a lot of money, there were a lot of home-made gifts. And frankly, i miss that. It makes me sad to listen to kids nowadays and their wishes. Fuck the parents if they didn't get the 400 euro gift they asked for. A lot of kids nowadays deserve a good spanking. A home-made gift shows love, people put time and effort in to make it for you. To me that is worth a whole deal more than an expensive gift. We kids of course did get some toys, but when we got older, we were getting more and more home-made gifts too. I still have the very fine crocheted tablecloth my grandma made for me, and the very beautiful pottery my aunt made.
After we finished in our room, we went down a floor, to one of my aunt and uncles. There we started all over with drinks and unpacking gifts. From there to my other aunt and uncle and we always finished with our last aunt and uncle (the ones that made me the pottery), because they had the most room to play. They are artists and build their house according to their needs. The house had a concrete floor and the main area reached from floor to roof. On two sides of the house they build rooms like balconies. That was very cool. They needed the big area because they made large objects of clay. In the middle of that area they had a large Christmas tree hanging down from the ceiling/roof. Just high enough above the floor so all the kids, cats and dogs could run and play underneath it without knocking it over. I loved that house...
The day ended like almost all cold days we spend in Austria. All the kids were gathered around in pajama's and we had to run out in the snow barefooted. Then when we got back in, the mum's rubbed our feet dry and warm and we went straight to bed. Their little trick to give us a warm and glowing feeling in bed, and it works.
No matter what happened later in life, i'll always cherish these memories. Life was good then.
The ghost of Christmas present
Until this year i've tried to keep our tradition a little alive, even though i call it Yule now instead of Christmas. I never started decorating until the weekend before Christmas. I did had to buy the tree a few weeks before though, or else all the good ones would have been gone. That wouldn't be a problem if i would get a fake tree, but to me that's not an option, a real tree is a must. I love real trees, the look, the scent, everything. Especially now i don't have a carpet where the needles get stuck in until next Christmas.
My decorations still look Austrian as well, very natural. Half of the decorations in the tree i made myself. Gold-sprayed walnuts and pine cones :)
This year i'll 'skip' Christmas, the decorating part anyways. It's just not worth it this year. After the major renovation we had 2 months ago, my apartment is still a mess. And because i started packing, there are cardboard boxes every where. I have some lights all year round anyways and i already started to burn candles again now it's getting dark outside so early. That's enough decoration for me this year.
I'll go to my mum on the 24th and will stay there until the next day. Most likely i'll bring my ps2 again, so my mum and i can watch some movies together when my brother and his family go home. Something we really like doing together :)
After Christmas, my boyfriend comes over from the UK for a week. I'm looking for things we can do, because i would like to show him some more of the Netherlands. Maybe we'll visit some friends too. And i'm planning to get him some fireworks for New Year's Eve. Normally i wouldn't pay for fireworks. There is so much going off other people payed for, i don't feel the need to pay for some myself. But this is different, i grew up with lots of fireworks and for him this was new. He likes things that go boom. Last year he even called home to a friend to let him hear the fireworks and to tell that it goes on and on and on. He's such a guy ;)
The ghost of Christmas future
Who knows what the future will bring us? We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?
Even though you never can be certain, i do hope it involves a family, a tree and the scent of freshly baked cookies.