A Christmas Eve Like Never Before

Being a kid, I remember always, and I mean always, decorating the Christmas tree on December 24. Never a day before, or later. Well, I doubt that anyone decorates it later, but I had to punctuate the precise timing of such event. It was usually my father, my sister and I that had this task to fulfill.

My mother was usually cooking for Christmas on such day. In Romania we have, in my opinion, much much more Christmas dedicated food than anyone would actually need for the holidays. That's why she stayed in the Kitchen basically the whole day while us were taking care of the tree business, for like an hour or so, and then getting to spend the time waiting for Santa. Time spent that felt like dogs feel when the're waiting for their turn in mating season.

Not the proper joke for the season, right? I have a bad humor and that's pretty much I can offer as a comic analogy. It was nice spending time decorating the tree, it was nice to taste a bit from the goodies in the kitchen and annoy my mother and it was nice to wait for that magical Santa. As a kid that day was probably the best, and most expected, day of the year.

It usually snowed that time around, and the frame of such Holiday was simply magic, or at least my eyes were seeing it as magic. That makes me think and say about Christmas, that it is a kids dedicated holiday. I don't think any adult can enjoy with that much intensity, no matter the gifts, what children feel on Christmas Eve. Not all of them unfortunately...

The lucky ones though really have the time of the year on December 24. At least I did. Now I'm a grown up, kind of, and I acknowledge that Christmas is just an old Black Friday technically, and it's all about sales, shopping and spending. Not too much about spending time anymore, but more about spending cash. There's some holes in our souls nowadays that no matter how much we invest in filling them, it seems like never enough, and never the right material.

I guess that's where we are wrong. With choosing the material, and too often that's not really made of matter, like plastics and metals. It's something magical. Something that you don't buy from the shops, like the ones I went to today. It wasn't a planned shopping day though. I simply went with a friend of mine to make some shopping, because he felt like not having enough for tomorrow.

However, I felt like I was getting in an ants nest whenever I would enter a shop. Everywhere you would look, all that you would see was full shopping carts, some sort of zombies pushing the carts and tons of decorations cleverly mounted in the shops to make you spend even more. The guys know how to do marketing. You have to create the feeling that your beloved shopping center, which is nothing more than a shopping center, is living the Christmas vibe in tune with you.

Not in my case, although I bought myself as well some Christmas present last night. I found some good running shoes on sales and I though why not. I'm searching for some very comfortable ones for quite a while. Other than that, it really doesn't feel like the old Christmas vibe is still alive. Probably I'm not the one feeling it anymore, but it used to be different. Not even food is not a catch these Holidays.

I've had some fast food while having a break from going from shop to another and I regret it, like I regret spending money in casinos. The flow of people is much more than the restaurants can handle and the quality of the food is much lower than the temperature outside. Mentioning temperature, I will say that in here there's no sign of snow and we will for sure won't have any snowflake this year. Over 12°C on January 1st...

With or without the snow and the good old Christmas vibe, I will live *to celebrate" this one as well. The best I can... Hope you are having a wonderful Christmas and wish you all the best! Steem on!

Thanks for attention,
Adrian