And a Merry Christmas to you all
I am often asked what I plan to do over the holidays …
Back in the UK, of course, the big holiday of the year is Christmas but here it is New Year. As a result, whereas back home I might have been asked, ”What are you doing for Christmas?” or “How will you spend Christmas?’the question is usually about New Year: “Kak vi budetiye vstrechit noviy god?” – “How are you going to meet the New Year?” I really like that phrase … to “meet the New Year”.
The New Year is coming, and at midnight between December 31st and January 1st, we meet it and then spend time together for 365, (or 366), days before saying goodbye to it and meeting a new one. It’s like an allegory of life where we make acquaintances which blossom into friendships and then … people move on.
My answer to the question is usually something like: “in bed”. I have been known to stay awake and see the New Year in, but normally I retire as usual somewhere in the middle of the evening, falling asleep watching a film and then rising, as usual, at something like six o’clock and going about my daily business.
You see, I am not a great one for celebrating holidays, especially the big ones like Christmas and New Year. Maybe it’s a reflection of the fact that I work in tourism and hospitality where the holidays are just another working day … like the Windmill Theater in wartime London, the hotel never closes.
Now, I have no problem marking birthdays and anniversaries, commemorating special dates in history or one of the internationally recognized days which aim to focus attention on some issue or other, such as World AIDS Day, but it seems to me that there is something artificial about these really big holidays.
Celebrating New Year on January 1st is really an arbitrary date. New Year has been celebrated in different cultures on different dates over the course of history. There is nothing particularly special about January 1st.
Christmas is similar. It is generally agreed that whenever Jesus was born, it was almost certainly not on December 25th, which was a date chosen because it was already a Roman festival, and a heathen one as well. Most of the traditions which we follow in celebrating the “event” back in Bethlehem over two centuries ago are relatively recent inventions, albeit if many of them have their roots back in antiquity.
I am, however, no Scrooge, nor like Oliver Cromwell who actually banned Christmas from England back under the Protectorate. I am happy, for example, to attend Christmas or New Year parties and I make a few concessions like putting up “Christmas lights” in my apartment and cooking a special meal, but generally I like to keep it a “low key affair”. Christmas and New Year, after all, do serve useful purposes; if only, as the Mufti of Kyrgyzstan pointed out, that they provide an opportunity to reflect on the past, think about our conduct and plan for the future.
They also serve as a time for families and friends to gather together and catch up on what everyone has been doing. That, however, is a double edged sword. All the preparations involved can bring on stress, and gathering large numbers of people together, each with their own preoccupations, aspirations and hopes, stresses and worries, only emphasises and heightens emotions and concerns.
To be honest, my family has never been particularly close or demonstrative … I suppose that we are typically examples of British reservedness. It’s also a feature of the social mobility of modern life. Although they both came from large families, when they died my parents were the last members of each to remain in their home town, Malvern. Some had travelled abroad, (for example to America or New Zealand), whilst others had moved away for their work. My brother moved to Hertfordshire and I came here.
Although we do keep in touch, we all have our own lives and new friends and families. It’s not easy to get everyone together. My father used to say that we one ever got together for “hatches, matches and despatches”; christenings, weddings and funerals. These days, with christenings becoming fewer and fewer, those occasions are also becoming rarer.
Last night, however, I was invited to a family gathering which was very pleasant.
One of our investors had brought her two children from Australia and the family had decided to gather to celebrate Christmas in their honour – Christmas being an important holiday in Australia and they didn’t want them to miss out on the celebrations.
It is common for people here to mark and “congratulate” Westerners like me on the holiday, even if they don’t celebrate it themselves. I have a number of cards bearing the traditional “Season’s Greetings” which people made a point of delivering early so that they would be with me before Christmas instead of waiting, as would be the usual practice, until next week as the local holiday approaches. Some people came in to the office or telephoned specifically to wish me Happy Christmas.
Despite the numbers involved, (fourteen grandchildren of different ages were joined by ten adults – grandmother, parents and spouses, … and me), gathered together round the table chatting and eating Manti. It was a fairly low key affair, but that suited me.
So, December 25th, Christmas Dayhas arrived, (or, at least, what they call here “Catholic Christmas” to distinguish it from Orthodox Christmas which is celbrated two weeks later on January 7th). As usual, I am in the office trying to attend to the daily routines, but I suppose that I should take the time to wish all my readers those traditional seasons greetings: “Merry Christmas!”
Se Rozhdestvom!
Bishkek