Christmas again? Yay!

This is now the second Christmas I have written about since I started this blog. It's getting a little samey, as I read back to the previous posts, but I guess anybody's writing does.

I feel better about Christmas this year than I did last year, but I really couldn't deal with the idea that there is so much pressure at this time of year to engage with family in ways I usually don't. I had to take some very decisions because of a holiday which is supposed to bring joy, a sense of community. At the same time, I have now understood a lot about them since.

Christmas a time when most Christian westerners agree to disagree on pretty much everything for at least a week, offer each other gifts they can't afford and claim not to want any themselves, and overindulge in food and drink. The good side of this is of course that, in a good setting, it can be fun and can strengthen ties with the family. Even though I really struggle to listen to Uncle Bob's ranting about foreigners and unemployment, I drink a glass of wine with him, and team up with him in a silly board game. After all, it's not because he's a bigot that I can't sit and enjoy a bit of time with him. In reality, I don't have an uncle Bob; this is all hypothetical. But if I did, that's how I'd try to deal.

But my own decisions aren't really tough compared to a lot of people I've discussed this with. A friend of mine who moved away from her family in the USA finds Christmas particularly stressful because of this. She disagrees very deeply with her family's beliefs and often extreme political views which they inevitably voice at the dinner table. She is forced to either sit tight and put up with the most offensive comments and views, which go against everything she represents and believes in, or else she is the party pooper. The troublemaker who spoils everyone's Christmas once again by riling up Uncle Bob with her artsy-fartsy grad school smart-ass comments. What to do? Put up and shut up? Be the black sheep and ruin everyone's good time?

The sense of community Christmas builds is, to my mind, pretty fragile. It's not like eid or ramadan for Muslims. They will get together and fast as a way of reminding themselves what it is like to be deprived, to give food and wealth communally, and stick together through a hardship. This makes a lot more sense than splurging over each other, in my view. Westerners use the birth of a prophet as an occasion to consume even more recklessly than usual. A happy Mastercard holiday for all.

I'm about to see what it is like being a 'visitor' for Christmas, for the first time, in a couple of weeks. I will be travelling off to Canada, and travelling across the border to my aunt's place in Buffalo, New York State. It's going to be very interesting to be the outsider, who is a member of the family, but yet doesn't know anything about the culture or the people themselves. I know my aunt to see, but hardly spent more than a conversation at a wedding party in her presence. I haven't seen my cousins, Liam and Niamh, since I was about 14. I have no idea who they are, what they are like, or if I will have anything in common with them. Stragest of all, they are the same age as the kids I teach, and I really don't know how living with kids of that age will fare with me, with all my teacher instincts which kick in with adolescents. Will I be a teacher around them? Will I fit in like a ferret up a cosy sleeve or stick out like a sore, puss-filled thumb?

Tune in next month to find out...