by Wesley
Home >> Fröhliche Weihnacht überall!
It’s time for my annual pro-Christmas ramble. This year my love for the holiday season is even stronger after my trip to Germany and its Weinachtsmärkte. It makes one pine for the true Christmastime, with its evergreen branches, Advent wreaths, red ribbons, and golden angels. You can be a cynic and call it kitsch. Perhaps I love Christmas because it is the one time of year when it is OK to be kitsch.
In Germany, not one tree, not one lamppost, not one shop window is saved from garland. Not one square is saved from the smell of Glühwein, Lebkuchen, and Bratwurst. O! The glory of Christmas! I may be wrong but it seems that, as in my country, people live Christmas in a different way than in Spain. People are excited to decorate the tree, excited to put lights in the windows, excited to sing carols. Here people drag out the tree because they have to and the only ones singing carols are greedy children on Christmas Eve out to make a few bucks by mumbling some out-of-tune carols at your door.
People complain about spending, people complain about all of the people at the supermarkets, people complain about the family dinners. Here’s my solution. Don’t do it. Scrooges who hate Christmas ruin it for the rest of us by frowning and moaning. If you don’t want to take part, don’t!
I’ve heard time and again that Christmas is a hypocritical time of year when we are nice to people that we are mean to the rest of the year. Not true. If I hate you, I’m not going to be any nicer to you at Christmas than any other time of the year. Besides, I think people that say they hate Christmas say so just to be different, to be modern, to be hip, to sound intellectual. But as far as I’m concerned, they are not the least bit cool and are the biggest hypocrites of all because everybody likes a present!
I’ve heard time and again that Christmas is a sad time of year because we remember the people who are no longer here to celebrate with us. Don’t you remember them the rest of the year? Must we stop living because they did? Would they appreciate your melancholic holidays? Christmas as a child is a marvellous thing but we are no longer children. We must look at Christmas from another perspective. Do not live in the past; it will never, ever return.
Christmas for me is A Charlie Brown Christmas. See it. It is kitsch, I admit it. I showed it to students once and they said “vaya chorrada.� That hurt more than any “bah humbug� ever could. My favorite part is when Linus tells the story of Christmas after Charlie Brown asks if there is anyone who knows what Christmas is all about.
Merry Christmas!
Released under the following licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDeriv
You are free to copy, distribute and display the contents of this article but you must give credit to and mention the original author. You are not allowed to use these contents for commercial purposes, and you may not modify them to make any derivative works.
For full licence description, go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.1/es/deed.en
Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2006-12-14 11:00:00 +0100
Copyright (C) ITT (http://www.itt.es) and Planet Lingua (http://www.lingua.es)
We have more weekly letters by Wesley
Poll for this weekly letter
Do you like Christmas?
Licencing
You are free to copy, distribute and display the contents of this article but you must give credit to and mention the original author. You are not allowed to use these contents for commercial purposes, and you may not modify them to make any derivative works.
(click the above link for more information)
Add a comment
Hi!
I completely agree with Wesley.
Today, a Christmas Holidays is just a excuse to mass media and marketing’s company to coerce people to buy more and more and more.
I’m not believer, and I observe believer people that they don’t really “live” those days acoording with their own believes. Now, the really Messiah is a Supermarket, it’s sadly but all of us can check how many people go to Shopping and how much go to the Church …
For me, the only day that a truly enjoy is a New Year’s day, becouse it means a change, and I love changes! ... it’s a opportunity to review the last year, maintain a good things, moments and friends, and forget the bad things …
At any rate, I recognize that it’s a good chance to meet with old friends and family … and the best moment to make aims for the new year (even the most of those I never obtain ;)
Bye!
First of all, Merry Xmas to all !!! (he he he),
For me, Christmas is a holiday, a great excuse to get together with family and friends, to stay in touch and all that. But just as we have been doing during the year, there’s nothing new in that sense…
And regarding the shopping fever, I think we all have a choice so we can do whatever we feel like. I admit that TV and other media are really bombing us with all kinds of messages that try to tell us all the things we have to do in Christmas, I don’t blame them, but I prefer to turn that Xmas off, and to choose my own.
Regards,
Cristina
I don’t want to sound modern or hip or , God forbid (!) , intellectual but …Christmas is loathsome.
kitsch means garish, tasteless, or sentimental, doesn’t it? I have trouble with the idea that something can be so bad that it becomes good. How does that work exactly?
Christmas should be about the birth of Christ! If you want something else, get another festival! You’ve got 364 other days to choose from!
You could invent Tinsel Day where people can decorate their houses with green and red lights. Or Muzak Day where people could listen to twee pseudo-religious jingles in the supermarkets . Or you could introduce Corte Inglés Day where people spend their money on exchanging gifts.
All those things are fine if you like that sort of thing.
But leave Christmas to remember and celebrate the only truly hopeful thing that’s happened to us for the last 2000 years!
Advertisements are something we could talk about for hours. I can neither justify nor criticise them. They are a part of society. At Christmas the ads are for sweets and toys; in the summer for cold drinks and beach holidays. I think we are bombarded with ads all year.
Dónal: One thing is to sound intellectual and another thing is to be intellectual. You know that. My point was that hating Christmas doesn’t make someone smart. Some people tend to think that intellect and tradition don’t mix. They can.
The birth of Christ? GREAT!
I think Christmas is great because you have vacation. Not that this really applies to me now that I am currently unemployed, but…
I love Christmas. This year I am spending it in Manila, Philippines. I am writing this in my grandmother’s house, which is quite dressed for Christmas inside and out. She waited for me and my Auntie Mia from Los Angeles to put up the tree, but the Christmas crockery was already out. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the long table is set with her old Christmas tree plates. Not to mention the music. I will now sing along for you all: HAVE YOURSELF A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS…
Surely Christmas is what you make it yourself. Unfortunate however for parents with little money to spend who have to suffer the constant pressure from their kids to buy the latest electrical gadget, or the latest fashion in clothes. If only it didn’t start in September! I preferred Christmas in my native Ireland when the holiday dragged on until New Year. Now it depresses me to know that come December 26 everything here in Manila will be back to normal. For God’s sake even some of the Malls are open on Christmas Day! By the way, I still cannot come to terms with Christmas without the cold. There is something perverse in listening to all those Christmas songs about sleighbells in the snow, and white Christmas when it’s 30+ C outside.
Happy holidays!..as they say in the secular world
Down with killjoys! It’s one thing to be principled, another to be grim and boring. To be festive is not to be unprincipled. To be generous is to give people the benefit of the doubt. Lots of people who give gifts at Xmas (big gifts, small gifts, sweet nothings, gestures) like to give gifts throughout the year, simply because it is in their nature to do so.
One important difference between Xmas in Spain and Xmas elsewhere can be discerned in the background of the recording of this weekly. Listen. It has to do with the kind of Christmas music that is appreciated. HARK!
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was written by another Wesley, Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley.
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas…”