I´ve just noticed
the rumour - it´s going to be Christmas again. (Those who use the notion
"X-mas" just don´t want to emphasize the cristian sense of the name,
but they celebrate it anyway, so let´s not be hypocrites and let´s face it like
it is.) Since I live in the place where the winter is poor on snow and it seems
rather like it´s an eternal autumn, you don´t notice anything until the town establishment starts to spend money on the ugly lights that should mean the Christmas
decoration. Then the music - the shops have to put Christmas songs all day long
to make the atmosphere. But it´s been a long long time, I don´t see any sense
in all this. I sketch out some habits which don´t make much sense to me:
1.
Giving the presents
People is running around to pick up some
presents for the family which became some kind of obligatory ritual. You just
feel strange when you don´t give anything to anyone and you always fall into
the trap and get something at least to your parents. Some people say "It´s
not about giving the presents." Of course not, but they do give at least
one present to each family member just to keep the tradition. Other people say
"It´s not about giving presents." and they don´t give anything, but
when someone give them something, it´s a bit embarassing for them. And some
other people say "It´s not about giving presents." and they don´t do
so and they don´t recieve anything and they live it happily by singing
Christmas songs and making little boats from walnutshells. Well, I don´t think
the third sort of people really exist in the Western world. But I do not
advertise nor this third kind of celebrating Christmas, although it would be
the calmest version.
Is that nobody think about the meaning of
all this? Why the hell people have to give presents to one another? Is this any
tradition? Yes, maybe the tradition of bringing the meaning to all this,
because the Christmas traditions vary from country to country - each one just
invent what is most credible within given geographical sphere. But I don´t see
any sense in it. If it should be a symbol of giving the presents to the newborn
Jesus, what about Three Kings? Weren´t they the ones who, according to the
legend, brought the presents to the newborn? Yes, they came 6th of January and
maybe because it took them so much time since the Jesus was born, the people
just invented the immediate institution of giving the presents at the very day
he was born. This could be kind of an explanation. (Still in Spain, they
celebrate the day of Three Kings as well by giving the presents to children
again .. and the Christmas become twice as expensive.)
But still – why
Santa Claus? Or why Baby Jesus (in my country it is a creature, called Baby
Jesus, who brings the presents to children – it´s the other way around!!)? If
there´s a tradition to give presents as a symbol of giving the presents to the
baby Jesus, why the people have to employ the divine feature in it? The
tradition should just involve the people giving the presents to one another,
not a divine being who brings the presents to them. And imagine all that
children when they discover Santa Claus, Baby Jesus, or whoever doesn´t exist!!
Some of them suffer a big shock.
But
in general, being somehow obliged to give presents just because the tradition,
is an attempt to our freedom.
2.
Decorating the
Christmas Tree
When someone cut
a tree to please himself and then throw it away, it´s called wasting the
natural sources. When most people do that, it´s called Christmas.
The great
business around the Christmas Trees is disgusting. Every year thousands of
trees are cut to be sold in markets to the people who decorate it with plastic
chains and after two weeks they throw it away. It´s a sad view every time I see
an abandoned tree still with some rests of decoration beside the trash bins. Not to speak about the huge ones that are placed in the middle of the main squares to endanger the people in case of heavy wind!
If you have the
necessity to decorate something with Christmas motives, why don´t you put it on
the fridge? Why the illuminated windows are not enough? Why a tree? The
artificial tree is a solution, but still, why a tree? The trees are symbols of
fresh nature not only in winter. Definitely it´s beause of the smell. Welcome
to the vanity fair! Light the incence stick! And if you really have to have a
tree, choose the plastic one - you can
use it as many times as you want until you burn it down! In case you have a
real (but already dead) tree at home, just think for a while: where´s the
consciousness about the nature, where have a mere common sense gone?
3.
Eating a “traditional”
Christmas dish
Here I am going to talk about the Czech habits,
because in each country they have their proper Christmas Eve dinner and I just
want to let you know how the things are going in my country (where I don´t live). There´s a “tradition”
of eating carp with potato salad. I emphasized the notion “tradition” in this
way because it´s not really a tradition. The people started to eat it just few
decades ago (around fifties) and it was thanks to the famous cookbook by Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová. She was the one who first prepared a
carp for the Christmas Eve dinner and the people somehow took this as a habit.
However, the traditional meal was for example a "Mushroom Jacob" prepared from cooked hulled grain (barley) and mushrooms,
but it varied from region to region. The fish were eaten mostly in wealthier
families. And maybe because the Christmas is a holiday when the people eat most
of the year, the people just wanted to eat something special (and to show other
people they can afford that).
The issue is that every year they are killed thousands of carps which are breeded all the year in ponds just because of this occation and held in special tanks before they die stressed and already half dead. And it´s being held as a kind of an attraction for the people - in the main square you can see live carps, you can choose one, and they kill it before your eyes or (quite usually) you take it home alive to show it to your little children and then in secret you kill it yourself in the bathtub. In my family this was the every year ritual. But I am of that opinion that if you want to celebrate Christmas, you can do it without this cruelty.
And it´s quite a bit strange how some people are into Czech habits they even don´t realize the core of some of them. Once I maintained an e-mail conversation with one Japanese guy who loved Czech Republic and he once wrote me something like "oh that´s great how you celebrate Christmas, I´ve heard you eat carp and potato salad .. amazing!".. I wrote him back what really contain this amazing habit and he didn´t wrote me back anymore .. But I prefer to say the truth before pretending it´s all ok just to keep the conversation.
4. Being with family
Yes, some of us are not with their family for all the year long and this is a perfect moment to get the family together. But aren´t there other occasions to put the family together? I think Christmas is like artificially created atmosphere for being nice and happy. And if you have another problems to deal with, you just have to pretend you are nice and happy and it leads only to tension between the family members.
The second thing is that some of us think that everything has to be perfect - the decoration, the meal, the presents (yes, usually they are mothers), .. they are so obsessed that they just really can´t keep the normal conversation with the family members and at the end everyone gets stressed.
It´s all so well arranged that you are almost afraid to say something that wouldn´t fit into the arrangement. This hypocrisy that all this raise in us, is maybe the worst thing on Christmas. So it should be definitely smarter to put the family together in any other occasion except Christmas.
In the end, if you don´t have to celebrate Christmas, it´s better not doing it. It prevents you from stress, food overdose, pretended smiles and much cruelty.
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