Hey everyone!
Sooooo... Remember when I said I'd try to post
once or twice a week? Well, turns out I couldn't do that, which now leaves me
with less time and more half-finished blog posts than I'd like to have...
But enough about me and my lack of
self-discipline. IT IS CHRISTMAS TIME!! YAYYY! :D (Well, technically, it's already
over, but let me have this!) Now as we all know, Christmas is celebrated in
various extremely different ways all around the world, which kind of figures,
since different parts of the world obviously have different cultural
backgrounds, etc., etc.... But even within one single country or culture, where
the festivities in general are more or less the same, Christmas can be
celebrated in several different ways. Each and every family has their own,
let's call them rituals, on December 24th and the days following. I've always
found it quite interesting to kind of compare Christmas stories with my
friends. To find out what rituals or habits we have in common and in what ways
my own personal Christmas experiences differ from those of others.
So I figured why not make that into a blog post
and tell the lovely people of the web (if there even are any who bother to read
my unfortunately rather inactive blog ^^) a little bit about how my family and
I usually celebrate Christmas.
When, where, with whom
On Christmas Eve - which, in Austria, is "the
actual" day of Christmas - my parents, my siblings and I usually celebrate
at my parents' house. It used to be just us, but a couple of years ago my dad's
parents came over on the 24th to celebrate with us and it kind of became a
tradition (can you call that a tradition?) for them to visit, so now were seven
people instead of just five... The more the merrier, eh? ;)
Christmas Day is normally spent at my mum's parents'
house together with my uncles, aunts and cousins. If everyone's there we're 15
people, so the tranquil, reflective holiday that is Christmas Day tends to get
quite... lively... But it's always good fun and a nice opportunity for the
whole family to come together and catch up.
"Christkind"
I am Austrian, so of course it's the "Christkind"
who brings our presents. There's no Santa Clause, no "Weihnachtsmann",
and no anything else. Go "Christkind" or go home! Us Austrians are
pretty strict about that one, I guess... ^^
My parents still like to pretend Christkind
exists, even though none of us, not even my eight year old sister, actually
believe that anymore. They mostly do that to annoy us. Asking direct questions
about who is going to buy/wrap/hide/etc. Christmas presents is an absolute no
go, because "What are you talking about? Christkind brings your presents, I don't have anything to do with that!
You're going to have to ask Christkind...". Me and my siblings have heard
sentences like that out of my smirking parents' mouths more often than I can
count. Usually they're followed by an eye-roll, annoyed glares and a lot of begging
to "just please give me a serious answer for once"... As exasperating
as those conversations might be, they, too, have become a part of our
Christmassy rituals over the years. *sigh* ;)
[This isn't really connected to celebrating
Christmas itself, but I happened to come across this on YouTube a couple of
days ago and found it funny, so here's a video of Christoph Waltz rather aptly,
if a bit exaggeratedly, describing the Austrian tradition of
"Krampus" on an American talk show: ]
Church
Christmas is obviously a Christian holiday.
Which is why it makes sense that for lots of people going to church is a really
important part of celebrating Christmas. Personally, I am not that much of a
religious person, so church usually isn't part of my Christmas routine. That
may seem hypocritical to some people and they might argue that I shouldn't
celebrate Christmas at all, if I can't do it in the religious, biblical way,
but I'd feel like even more of a hypocrite if I went to church and pretended to
believe in everything that's said there just for the sake of Christmas and
meeting other people's standards. To me, Christmas is not so much about
religion anymore as it is about culture and tradition. I think you don't have
to believe in God or Jesus or whatever in order for Christmas to be a nice,
happy and festive day spent together with your loved ones. Don't tell my
grandparents I said that... ^^
Food
From what I've experienced there seem to be a
couple of "typical" Christmas dinners. A lot of the people I know
usually eat either fondue or raclette, which I've always found kind of weird,
since neither of the two are typically Austrian dishes or strike me as
particularly Christmassy... But for some reason they still seem to have
established themselves as rather popular dishes for Christmas dinner.
Sooooooo, that's everything about my Christmas "rituals" that I can think of right now... If you have any questions, if you'd like to add something, if you agree or disagree with me on something I wrote, feel free to comment and I'll gladly reply!
I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas had
a nice one! Enjoy the rest of your holidays! :)
