I might have been ill and I might have given the flu to my wife (sharing, caring person that I am) but this year, unlike any other year, I am embracing Christmas like never before.
The food has been ordered, the drinks are well chilled, the guests are invited (all 16 of them) and here I am starting to put decorations and lights up. As you can see , Victoria is just sitting there in absolute disbelief as she has never seen anything like this.
I used to be very "Bah Humbug" which has only slowly changed over the years.
I did not care much for Christmas due to my experiences of that time in my youth back in Germany being one of mixed emotions.
To my mind, Christmas should have been a time for much joy; a time of laughter, sharing and relaxation. Things were however too regimented with too many ‘rules’ and set-ups.
Let me give you some examples:
Weeks before Christmas we were tasked with learning some Christmas poem which we would have to recite for our parents and grand-parents on Christmas Eve. I have never had any leanings towards poems, nor could I remember such things easily. It was a chore I did not relish and I resented the fact that I had to do this before any presents could be received.
It built in me a great reluctance of receiving presents and for many years I would have preferred not getting any.
The day before Christmas the lounge was locked up and declared a “no-go zone”, as my parents would use this room to decorate the tree without us seeing it. According to them, it was “Father Christmas” who brought the tree, decorated it and left presents as well.
In Germany, the handing out of presents (and all the other things) takes place on Christmas Eve. The usual day would go like this:
After arguing most of the morning about the question why we had to learn a stupid poem, I then had to join my father in an afternoon nap, which I did not want to do.
When we finally got up I argued the case of not having to take a walk (“Let’s see if we can meet Father Christmas”) as even as a small child I had cottoned on to the fact that every time we arrived back home we had “juuuust missed Him!” and when I was older and did not believe in Father Christmas any longer – what exactly was the point???!!
Next on the list of arguments was my parents insistence of having to get changed into our ‘Sunday Best’ clothes, which considering the fact that only ‘family’ was assembled seemed to be utterly unnecessary and pointless, since the moment the presents had been distributed we run upstairs to get changed back into comfortable attire. I cannot remember one Christmas when my Dad and I did not fall out over these things.
We then would sit around in the kitchen whilst my Dad would light the (natural) candles on the tree without setting the house on fire. A bell (how annoying is this?!) heralded the permission for my grandparents, my mother, brother, sister and me to enter the living-room and admire the tree. Then came the awkward “stand in front of the tree and recite your poem” time.
First off was my sister, then me, then my brother.
Most of my efforts went into selecting the shortest possible poem acceptable to my parents but even these presented a big hurdle to a young person harbouring a very negative attitude to Christmas, lazy to learn and hating to be pushed into any lime-light.
The presents were handed out and apart from a meal together, that was Christmas!
Christmas day and Boxing Day were total non-events!
This procedure did work fine when we were small kids but became utter nonsense by the time we got to the age of 12. Unfortunately, having a younger brother dragged this out until he was 12, by which time I was 17!
I guess my parents got the hint that year, when my ‘closely guarded’ poem for that year went like this:
‘Weihnacht ist heut’
Wie mich das freut,
Ich wünsche das Beste
zum fröhlichen Feste!
Loosely translated meaning:
It’s Christmas today,
How this pleases me,
I wish the best
On this happy occasion!
My father was not overly pleased, judging on the expression on his face but not wanting to kick-start another argument in front of my Grand-parents, mumbled something about lack of effort and telegram style (i.e. veeery short!).
In my heart I had determined that this was going to be the last time I would participate in this charade, since I would be 18 the following year and therefore ‘of age!’ and so it indeed was.
So you see that humming Christmas songs and decorating the house must have been a complete shock to my poor family :-)
