A Christmas memory.

The season of joy, love, family time and evenings with too much to drink is, sadly, over. I was looking forward to the holidays so much that when it finally came, it seemed like all the festive days just connected into one short period where time didn´t exist, TV was playing nonstop and social networks were flooding with stories and live feeds of friends celebrating holidays in their own ways.

On Christmas Eve, as we were cleaning up after the dinner and waiting for each other to go to the living room and give each other presents from under the tree, a memory hit me; when I was little, I believed that Jesus manages to be born, grow up and visit every single child in one night. We would have the dinner, our parents would tell us that in order give Jesus time to put our presents under the tree, we were not allowed to leave the table. However, somewhere between the lentil soup and the fried fish, my dad got this beyond-control urge to visit the toilet, which was, just by coincidence, located in the same hall as the living room was. Then, after a few minutes, we heard a jingle bell ringing “by itself” in the living room, which, for some reason, always left me breathless and in panic.

We would approach the living room, which always (except the lights on the tree) had lights switch off, and when I was told to enter the dark room as the first one, I was always afraid, because what if… maybe… just maybe… what if Jesus didn´t have enough time to leave the place (through the window) and what if I switched on the lights and would see this strange man with a long hair and bushy beard creeping under our Christmas tree?

Last week on Christmas eve, as we were moving from the dining room to the living room and I was the first one to walk through the dark hall, I remembered the anxious feeling from the childhood. It still persists, even now when I am old enough to know that nothing bad is going to happen and that when I enter the living room, there will just be the tree, the presents (which I helped to put under it) and my loved ones.

But still, funny how a thought can hide somewhere deep in your mind and the smallest detail can remind you of the past. It took only a moonlit hall, Christmas lights and a short walk through the house to remember such small detail from my childhood. And even though I was always creeped out as a little fart, I still loved that I was able to look back in time and reminisce.

I hope you enjoyed the season and all the festivities connected with it. The new year is already here, so let me wish you all the best for this new chapter of our lives. There is 365 new pages to fill, so let´s start writing!

Until next time,

čauko, Lenka :)