Sabine Reichel
I will be alone for Christmas (and hopefully New Years Eve, too) as I have been the last 3 years, liking it very much. Why? I'm an immigrant, over sixty and single. Siblings and family members are on another continent; American best friends live in other cities and nobody my age is willing to risk travelling huge distances just to sit at a table, eat too much and watching all younger people stare at their new technical devices, or men glancing longingly at the TV where - inexplicably for a foreigner - there will be Football (I think) seen as the highlight of X-Mas.
I remember that my first year alone had a few people probably thinking, "Oh, that poor lonely creature". And maybe I did feel a tinge of sadness, too. But that was before the COVID-19 pandemic turned all our lives upside down and apparently tripled (at least) an almost desperate yearning for celebrating Christmas at all costs. Now, kissing, hugging, laughing and long close talks with friends and the entire family from age10 to100, are banned. Who would want to invite a possible superspreader or even be that kind of new baddie anyway? So you are better off alone!
So, because of that I’m all of a sudden a bit of a trendsetter that gives out tips to the fearful, deprived Christmas freaks who think they won’t survive the absence of exhausting, tiresome traditions that can appear like re-runs of very bad TV-shows. Not me. I will survive just fine by being again the very prepaired escapist and outsider! Finally, the tables have turned!
"Jesus, (and I think she really meant HIM) I envy you so much!" shrieked my friend Kate, a mother of several young kids, a huge family and a husband - and I smiled kindly and wisely, trying not appear too smug.
Regardless of the sharp restrictions for the amount of people you are allowed to invite, she's been running around in a frenzy for weeks. She thinks of the burden of buying presents, how to arrange child care and home schooling, saving her business and her marriage – all at the same time.
So this is my advice: Make a statement, be an original. Break the pattern, grab the chance by Santa’s red coat tails for doing something different. I myself am ripping Christmas out of CORONA'S greedy grip and make it totally mine, re-shape it, bend it, give it new meaning, all to my very own taste! Well, if that isn't classic independent and spiritual living, freeing yourself from the dictate of capitalism, commerce AND Corona, then I don't know what is.
Kate’s eyes glittered with sheer envy when I told her that I will be reading, writing, watching Netflix, eating delicious foods, drinking champagne - all WITHOUT a mask - and thinking about the state of the world (which is dangerous and dire and I won't have enough champagne to drink it away.)
What I DO admit to is a severe case of nostalgia which I can’t seem to erase entirely. Did you know that nostalgia, when it was first defined in 1688, was an illness - and it was deadly? Today it can be deadly again if we stay too close and don’t get vaccinated; that’s the irony. This might also be the time to grow up! Christmas with its inherent magical and mystical force is for kids, I truly believe that and I'm aware that what I miss most are the memories, my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, which are all dead. So the only sad part of "home alone for Christmas" is the realisation that most forms of sadness are nothing more than saying goodbye to childhood for good.
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