No More Christmases Left For Me

I’m all out of Christmases.

They all come and go leaving me more numb to their magic with every year that passes. It’s all the same. Wishes and carols everywhere, but they’re repetitive and meaningless. They lack the joy they used to bring me as a child.

 

What I miss most about Christmas is the fresh smell of pine, the door bell ringing as the guests  arrive with snow on their boots and flowers in their hands for my mother, the abundance of hors d’oeuvres, nibbles and salads on the table, all that laughter and joy coming from a livingroom filled with the dearest of friends, having a really good pretext for hiding in my room with the lights off and eating gifted chocolates and the feeling, that wonderful feeling of waiting for something special to come your way and knowing it’s just around the corner, or stuck in the chimney.

Folks never believe me when I tell them I’ve memorized the lyrics to every single Christmas carol, old and new, commercial and obscure, hip-hop and easy listening by heart, but it’s true – test me, I dare you all – just because our Christmases as a family used to be soaked in music and traditions and although I didn’t understand their power as they were happening, the older I got, the more I realized how grateful I should have been for the memory of them all. This is how my family’s musical traditions and explorations have expanded and morphed into my own.

But during the past five years I’ve been spending the holidays away from home, working long hours and coming home exhausted, barely finding the strength to eat a whole mug of ramen soup and take a shower. Then I’d play my favorite carols and cry myself to sleep wondering what went wrong, trying to find a good reason for having put myself through this ordeal.

The first Christmas hurt the most. I felt lost and terribly small beneath the Oxford Circus lights, in a city full of people celebrating together, families on vacation, folks drinking mulled wine and champagne in pubs and restaurants, compulsive shoppers carrying bags over bags over bags of unnecessary and overly expensive things, but I would somehow find a little bit of peace by the water, in solitude, watching the party boats going back and forth in a continuous cycle and the London Eye Wheel spinning slowly, impassible to everything.

No streets covered in snow, no mother’s cozonac batter growing in a jar in the fridge, no red cheeked carolers, no late mornings lying in my bed, no ler. And where was God when I needed Him?

With every year that followed, the pain became less acute. It was still there, but I was getting better at managing it. It was o.k. to have less then perfect holidays spent in isolation and away from Facebook and Instagram, where hollow souls would oversell their happiness. It was o.k. for me not to have that. And it was great for me not to want that.

  

So I’ve stopped answering greetings and messages altogether; I see no point to them anymore – the ones I receive are more or less the same to whatever they sent me last year. And why do we need a specific month to really care about those around us, compromise and be gentle? Why can’t we take that Christmas feeling and carry it with us wherever we go? Why can’t we call our friends and family everyday like we do on Christmas? Why aren’t we always patient with our parents like we are in December? Why can’t we genuinely want the best of what the world has to offer for our neighbours, but in silence, with no complicated words? Why don’t we give just a little bit of ourselves every day to smeone in need of a hand or a shoulder? Why don’t we go looking for God in other places than temples and churches, for a change? He is never there.

This is the first year when it doesn’t hurt at all. Christmas doesn’t exist anymore. I can say it casually, no more longing for the things I cannot have, not even sadness about the loss. There is no place for sadness with God within you and so many gifts and blessings you don’t know what to do with.

From this year on, whatever they call Christmas is dead to me.

This year in September I found God and the answers I didn’t know I needed so desperately in the most unusual place – an almost hidden American diner that serves bottomless booze and burgers, ran by powerful, intelligent women and wonderful men around them that are always happy to help, where colleagues become friends and the coffee is not that great but it’s always there, where the buffalo wings are to die for and there’s no day without it’s lesson, where we change each other for the better and we’re always out of cauliflower, but there’s so much love in the air at any given time.

Green Eyed Kisses,