Being sad about the end of summer or autumn and about the cold winter is just as irrational as experiencing negative emotions because of the existence of gravity on Earth. Nature has no emotions and the change of seasons is not to blame for all sorts of sadness, longing and melancholy. Everything is only in our heads, and our heads are of little interest to anyone, especially to nature.
If I like something in winter, it is Christmas. Only that in my childhood it was a bit different.
It was the most special time of the year. As I remember now - real, real wax candles were burning on the Christmas tree. The night before Christmas, my grandmother used to lock herself in the kitchen, and I was too little to let her help overnight. With a pastry syringe, she would create such beautiful colorful pictures on her baked cookies that if I had been even a little older, it would have been a shame to eat them. But in those distant Christmas, I ate those cookies with a few bites. Those special cookies at the special time of the year.
But I also helped - I whipped the egg whites with a whisk until they were so stiff that they wouldn't fall out when the metal bowl was turned over. That's what my grandmother taught me. That's how I whipped them.
The tablecloth, white as snow and smooth as glass, covered our big table. Only silver-plated cutlery brought out for the most special occasions shone, only plates, glasses, and crystal dishes intended for the most special occasions sparkled.
However, even those special meals and things, I now understand, were only attributes of this Holy period, which would have lost all meaning without human communion with human, without joyfully festive mutual closeness, and on the contrary, communion and closeness can create the most special celebration without any attributes.
There have been many different Christmas Eve and Christmas periods in my life - more than once I have been with myself, all alone, more than once at a quiet table with loved ones, more than once at a table where the cult of food and television prevails, more than once in country houses with friends, so I already know and am sure that a holiday is, first and foremost, everyone's inner light or the desire to find it.
Everything else is secondary, pleasant, but completely unnecessary. Christmas Eve with a dried fish in a tent, when loved ones are nearby and peace reigns, can be light years away in its goodness from the Christmas Eve of a quarreling family sitting at a table with too much food.
Those evenings of this Holy Year, which I have had the opportunity to meet in solitude (not loneliness), were much brighter for me than some evenings of this time of year in the company of people. And vice versa. There was everything.
Recently, somewhere my eyes caught the headline: "Without Christmas trees - not holidays!". What else is it shouldn't be a holiday without? Lights, garlands, Christmas trees, tinsel, things that we buy too much, meals that we cook too much? I have seen many times how mothers give plastic buckets of meals to their adult children before leaving, when all this orgy is over. Because, well, who will eat it all?
And really - who will eat the excess food, and who will compensate for the lack of real closeness? I think this is a good question for self-contemplation just before the holidays.
What else can't we do without? Without Christmas tree photos on social networks? Plastic relationships that no candlelight will warm? I think everyone could do without all this. And having done so, simply turn to yourself and others, not to the phone or TV screen, remember repentance, mercy, forgiveness, gratitude, which you will not find on any store shelves.
Artificial sweeteners in relationships can only create a Christmas illusion that will crumble just as easily as it was created - without any effort. Lights and decorations can become a great attribute, but not a substitute for what you really want to have and feel during Christmas.
Let us be close in communion and peace, let us turn to those in need and pray for peace. I wish this with all my heart for myself and for all of you. For me, this is the only gift in which I put all my faith and hope this year. Have a meaningful Christmas Eve and Christmas, so that the moments do not remain in photos on social networks, but are engraved deep in the memory and heart, like that special Christmas of mine with those special colored cookies.
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With love, @madeirane
Photos are taken by me.
© 2024