the christmas spirit

This morning when I parked my car at the underground parking lot in the middle of town, I could hear familiar tunes coming out from the loudspeakers of the marketsquare. It went something like "jingle bells, jingle bells..." and after that those darned jingeling bells went on jingeling my poor scull the whole day through. It was at that moment I realised it had caught me off guard. Once again. The spirit of Christmas. But not the good one...

(As follows, a translation of a text I wrote exactly one year ago)

I would get by just fine without Christmas. Fact is I would be better off without Christmas, than with Christmas. And to really "step out of the closet" concerning the upcoming holiday I may just aswell admit that Christmas gives me the creeps. I make this announcement to you now, dear friends, right after the commercial Christmas celebrations has started - in my hometown - last weekend.

I am lousy at shopping, and especially for Christmas gifts. It has just as much to do with the fact that I don't know what You want, as with my earnest conviction that You do not need more chocolate boxes, scarves, DVD-movies, aromatic candles, designer coffee mugs, thinsulate gloves or bath-foam. To stand in line at a big super market in the middle of the biggest shopping rush of the year makes me feel sick, and at the very moment I stand there overheated but in a cold sweat, it is bound to happen: ALL acquaintances and friends I have not met in a year or so suddenly appear to say hello, right there and then. Not that I don't want to meet you - I do! - but NOT in Hades the week before Christmas.

"Now, if you carefully prepare yourself and get all the presents in time the stress will not become so imminent", the reasonable Christmas-fan might object. No, no, no! Why prolong the misery? Why start the commercial Christmas earlier than absolutely necessary? IS it even necessary? Ever?

Christmas could be such a nice holiday. It certainly has its potential, whether You're celebrating the birth of Christ or midvinterblot (winter solstice) or whatever. The vacation and time for leisure is well needed in the middle of darkness. But we also need to avoid the stress and desperate ordeal around unnecessary things so that real Christmas peace can present itself to us. At least for a few hours between all the other often somewhat hysterical traditions. In my country it's almost a sacrilage not to watch Walt Disney's X-mas greetings on TV every year...

Well, well. I am likely to eat a few gingerbread (maybe dissect the gingerbread house in advance?) this year aswell. Maybe we'll put the Christmas illuminations up too. And if You run into a grumpy, rednosed creature with its woollen cap almost covering the face and a lot of junk in its shopping trolley, it is not necessarily an overworked and exhausted Santa Claus. It might be me.

And I will not enjoy it.