There was always a lot of music and singing songs in different harmonies together.
We never bought christmas gifts. We made them ourselves. I spent the whole year preparing my gifts, knitting, painting, sawing, creating things at school and home to give at christmas. Something I had worked with, figured out by my own imagination, with my own hands, it is a gift that is much more fun to receive, than something someone just bought.
The only thing I bought was a christmas tree. My parents did not like it so they did not wanna buy it..... I guess it was the idea of bringing in a tree to die for no real reason.
So, we had to go and buy our tree ourselves, me and my sister, hand in hand. Struggling to drag it home in the snow, placing it somewhere inside, not to make too much of a mess and then decorating it with the glitter and red and golds.
As I grew older, the christmas tree thing just faded.
I much more preferred to sit round the table, playing games and enjoying the company of others. I must confess, I have not bought a christmas tree since I was 12. And Im perfectly fine without it. I might put some nice lights in my palm tree in the living room this year, but, that´s it.
If I had something, like a gift from my grand parents that they used to have for christmas, I would have brought it into the light for christmas...but I have none.
I will spend my christmas with my grand mother at her home for the elderly, along with my mother and her husband. They spend a lot of time visiting her, taking care of her, and it is such a wonderful thing to watch my mother, her caring for her mother and taking care of her like grandma used to do with my mother when she was a child. Life moves in Circles. Way to many elderly are just being left alone to die. Relatives just don´t have time the often say. I think it´s bullshit. The reality is that they are scared. Scared to face the reality that we are all getting old and ending up like them somehow.
We will most likely be one of very few relatives who spend time there. Too many families are occupied in their homes, preparing, buying, stressing their hearts out to have the food ready in time and not really being able to enjoy the peace of the holiday because of the guilt of not being with their parents or grand parents who are not able to move from their service homes or hospitals.
Why don´t everybody move their holiday celebrations to where they are?? If you can´t move the mountain you will move yourself to it, right?? The respect to our elderly....where did it go?
I´m looking forward to this christmas, as most of my holidays, I´ve spend with my grandmother. I will be wherever she is....Grand ma Rules!:) ....love to you all and happy holidays!
