At the beginning of this month, my mother was here, we had some great plans with the dad but I started to feel not very well two days after she arrived, so it was the best for me to do nothing, otherwise my uterus was hurting a lot. I guess it was stress because when she left, I started to feel ok again. It was probably her who infected us with the cold, meaning the dad felt like a crap for 4 days and was coughing and not feeling that well for another 3 days - unluckily for me, the cold lasted most of his holidays, so my plans about how effective we will be that week went to hell. Not to mention Teodor had a runny nose at the same time as his dad was dying of cough. Then the dad got better, Teodor caught his cough and I caught both. Perfect. This is what everyone needs just before Christmas
Christmas baking - Czechs are obsessed with having a lot of different types of Christmas sweets, so I wanted to try something more than gingerbread this year. I kind of hoped my mother would bake it for me, the first sweets she made, we had a few days later as a late evening snack with the dad :) The other sweets she made were not good. I tried to make some on my own, but it just didn't work out. Well, later I figured out the trick, but realized the dough doesn't make me feel good, so why to torture myself with making it again if we can have only gingerbread, right? I love gingerbread, so actually I don't feel bad for not having more types of Christmas sweets. I would be a total looser in Czech :-)
We haven't done any Christmas decorations or cleaning. Maybe next year I will try to make something with Teodor, this year he is still too young and most importantly, he doesn't care about crafts. Or maybe it's just me not wanting to go through it with him :)
I find it extremely difficult to create Christmas atmosphere because I don't have a memory of Christmas spirit when I was a child...I remember looking forward to opening my presents, but that was it. I didn't care about the lights, about baking...My parents were very down-to-earth people, my dad used to say he was looking forward to the time when we (me+brother) are grown-up, so they wouldn't have to celebrate it - well, my brother is now 32 years old and they still celebrate Christmas, give each other presents...I don't think my parents do particularly enjoy that but anything for my brother, right? :)
Another issue I have with Christmas is that it's a Christian holiday and since I'm not religious, I feel like it's pretentious..plus it is not the most important Christian holiday even though there is definitely more emphasis on it than on Easter.
The thing is that I would like Teodor see Christmas as a magical time...I mean December in Estonia sucks, it's dark, rainy, cold (it might be different feeling if there would be snow)...so little bit of Christmas cheer might be good, so I'm thinking hard how to make it happen in order to be natural for us parents who have no emotional connection to the holidays... I am not sure if I even want him to believe that some fairy-tale person is bringing gifts in contrast I really do enjoy seeing all of the fairies/elves/etc in Waldorf group...The good thing is that he's still quite young and I have a year to figure it out properly...Can you imagine he's going to be almost 3 next Christmas?
We're getting our Christmas tree hopefully at the beginning of the next week, we will decorate it on 24th, we want to go to see the reindeer in the Old Town on the same day, hopefully we will be all healthy by then and we will start eating gingerbread :) (I'm making another box today together with Teodor) We will probably follow the atheistic Russian tradition and will give presents on New Year's Eve. I don't care about the date when we will give/get presents, only decorating the Christmas tree on 24th is important to me. And the permission to eat Christmas sweets. We might eat fish on that day as a traditional Czech dinner, but I'm not stuck on that...I don't like fish much and definitely do not enjoy potato salad.
Interesting..
ReplyDeleteWhen I wasn't a Christian yet (my family wasn't at all, but we still had Christmas with all that belongs to it), I saw it as a Winter solstice celebration, just celebrated a couple of days later (because of being associated with Christian celebration as well), and having a mixture of traditions, both pagan and Christian, mixed together throughout history.
It made sense, because in Latvia celebration of Summer solstice is important as well (Midsummer), and it also is celebrated a couple of days later than actual solstice.
So I don't think you have to be religious to celebrate Christmas, as most of people anyway aren't, and you totally can still incorporate the traditions that you enjoy (having a tree, presents, sweets etc).
Only - of course, you should make it clear for yourself, why are you doing what and why. And also - be consistent (so children would have the annual rhythm and enjoy having family traditions) and enjoy it yourself! Because more than anything, yes, children can feel it, if you're being pretentious and fake.
It seems a difficult task - to create new traditions for your family, when you haven't enjoyed them in your childhood.. So good luck. :)
P.S. Of course, Christmas makes way more sense, when you're a Christian. ;)