OBLIGATION TO JOY

(Or What Happens on Christmas)

Let me rant about this lovely holiday for a moment. Or about how overrated and blown out of proportion it is. We all know the streets light up in beginning of November (if the city leaders have some sense) or in October (if they don’t). There’s the shopping frenzy, the movies, true values are forgotten, yadda, yadda, yadda. Okay. This doesn’t bother me in and of itself. What bothers me is the fact that all this is supposed to make us happy.

It is, right? All the movies, all the advertisements, even religion, keep telling us Christmas is the time of joy. It’s the time we are supposed to spend with our family and be happy. We have to be happy because it’s Christmas—how could we not be?

Well. I’ve only ever experienced one Christmas that sucked approximately as much as this one, but that’s not the point right now. So, why aren’t people happy?

I don’t even know where to start. With time, perhaps? December 24 is a perfectly normal working day in my country. Now go to work in the morning, come home and do everything that needs to be done, and then have fun when you actually just wish to be sleeping. Wonderful.

And what needs to be done?

1) Presents. I think giving presents is not mandatory. At least, for me it isn’t. People should give gifts only because they want to make somebody happy. Buying presents out of the sense of obligation ruins things anyway. Buying them to avoid guilt—well. See how nice our society has become? Everyone just buys something for everyone, so what’s the point? Both giving and not giving a present sends a message, and while one may be more hurtful than the other, there is no wrong message, only a true one or a false one.

2) Christmas tree. Many, many people do it earlier, but somehow, we always put it up on the 24^th. Either way, it’s something that should be fun, right? Right. Except when you’ve just come from work, and you’re tired, there are needles all over the floor, and where are the bulbs again, and what is the cat doing in the tree!?!

3) Cooking. If you invite anyone over, you’re stuck in the kitchen. If they invited you over, you probably feel you have to contribute something, so you’re stuck in the kitchen again.

4) Everything else that people may or may not do. Like cleaning. Or sending oh-so-many Christmas cards. Or whatever.

Not that any of these things are bad per se, but when you have to do them all at the same time, they just lose the charm.

Moving on to the topic of family. Who is family? Just parents and children, or do we need to include the grandparents, and what of the brothers and sisters, and the cousins, and the in-laws? Point being, it’s impossible to be with everyone that could count as family, and so family members get separated. Perhaps the partners want to spend time with their original families respectively, or maybe the daughter wants to be with her boyfriend, or the grandparents have gone to holidays into some village at the back of beyond.

There’s that, and then there’s forcing people to be together. Perhaps large groups of relatives don’t hate each other, but I’m pretty sure not everyone knows what to talk about with the rest of them because they only see each other a few times a year. So much about ‘loved ones’.

Some people don’t even have families, or they have a very bad relationship with them. How does it make them feel, that notion that ‘Christmas is for family’? We come up with these concepts and idea, and in the end, we feel boxed in by the very things we’ve invented.

And finally, our memories and expectations. I remember how Christmas was when I was a child. It wasn’t even that long ago, really. To me, Christmas was pure magic. People, biscuits, Christmas songs, candles, and that endless waiting until finally, finally Santa rang the bell on the Christmas tree and I’d rush into the room as fast as I could, trying to catch a glimpse of him. I thought I succeeded once, even though now I know it must have been a trick of light, or perhaps my imagination.

But every year, the expectation faded a bit more, there were fewer songs, and the house didn’t smell like biscuits anymore. A part of my family started going on holidays. At first, I didn’t understand why it felt as if Christmas were lost. Now I do. It isn’t exactly helping me, though. There’s still a part of me that remembers that joy and longs to feel it again. Every time, I’m hoping to find that feeling again, and every time, I’m disappointed. I keep thinking I should be happy. It’s Christmas, after all. But that idea—that expectation of joy—only stirs the nostalgia inside me. I imagine it is the same

for many, many people. We think we should be happy—and it makes us sad.

I suppose it’s up to us to find a way to make Christmas special. Yes, there are always other people involved; some of them don’t want to participate, some are absent when we wish so badly they were present. Whatever the case—somebody has to start, right?

Right.

(Merry Christmas.)