Never have the bells sounded more out of tune … Traffic is at a standstill … Your heart is racing … Awful music assaults your ears from every direction … Christmas whispers, ominous promises … Have you bought your presents yet? Tick tock. Tick tock. The clock tower strikes thirteen and you want to scream back at it: NO! God damn it, NO!
But of course you don’t. After all, you’re standing on an escalator. After all, no reasonably civilized person on this planet would behave like that—especially not at Christmas. Heaven! How did you end up in this situation, you ask yourself—and of course you already know the answer. Because you were lazy and reckless and acted without a shred of common sense. Once again, you missed your chance: the Christmas presents for the family haven’t been bought yet—haven’t even been thought of. Four candles burning, and with them the burning awareness that the little time left until the supposedly most wonderful time of the year is slipping away in fast forward.
For everyone who feels much the same as this stress-ridden author, here are a few personal thoughts and ideas: four suggestions on how to escape the Christmas frenzy—and still make your loved ones happy.
1. Food
No, not via Deliveroo or Uber Eats. Why not? Because you can do that the remaining 365 days of the coming year. Love, as we know, goes through the stomach—and whoever loves the stomachs of their loved ones should perhaps not always cast themselves as head chef, that much is true. Still, there are excellent cookbooks and countless YouTube tutorials these days, which even helped the author survive his student years without subsisting solely on cheese-and-salami toast and frozen pizza. Dare something! Try something new—and if it doesn’t taste good in the end? Forget it. At least the whole family is already there, so you can still recruit them for washing up afterwards. Shared activities create closeness.
If that feels too daring, there is, of course, the option of retreating into public space: surprise the whole family with a deliciously murderous crime dinner or some other form of experiential dining—perhaps even a meal in complete darkness? That way, you can focus entirely on taste.
2. Turning old into new
Holy heaven—you didn’t just think of your parents, did you? No. Of course not. Good Lord … Only an infantile amoeba devoid of any sense of propriety would conjure up such crude associations—but certainly no reasonable citizen or human being, least of all on Christmas Eve amid the shimmering reflections of polished baubles. That would simply be grotesque.
No … At the moment of gift-giving, when the presents lie beneath the Christmas tree, then—yes, then—the air is filled with joyful tension. Crackling anticipation hangs heavy and sweet, and just before the final moment, when children’s eyes glow and even adult hearts beat a little faster, one should be very sure that no disappointment lies neatly wrapped in the shadows of the fir branches. For many—especially those on tight budgets—the Feast of Love can quickly turn into a festival of anxiety, pressure and a sense of social inadequacy.
And yet necessity can be a virtue. Who really needs all the stuff accumulated over a lifetime? „Your business is our daily bread,“ proclaims the slogan of a company that rents out portable toilets. Likewise, one person’s „junk“ can be another’s joy. Whether books, musical instruments or unused sports equipment condemned to the attic—it’s not about cynically offloading unwanted clutter, but about giving valuable objects a new home, with heart and mind.
3. Time
Give your loved ones your most precious commodity: time.
Take time. Allow time. Go to a concert or an event together, visit a gallery, stroll through a market, or put on a few old records over a good glass of wine, beer, whisky or a cup of soy macchiato. Listen to the music—and listen to one another. Let your loved ones finish their thoughts, and don’t speak merely for the sake of hearing your own voice. You’ll be amazed at what you hear. And perhaps you’ll forget about time altogether. For as the saying goes: the most beautiful time is the time we don’t spend thinking about time.
4. -
„North, south, east and west, not even a little rest … the great nonentity … the master of amnesia … oh yeah … my respects … I am the son of absolute emptiness.“ This memorable statement was once committed to paper by a certain Rod. Not just any Rod, no—the Rod: bassist, guitarist, singer and eternally reinventing universal virtuoso of the greatest band in the world: Die Ärzte.
Now, connoisseurs might quite rightly object: a bassist at Christmas—that‘s even worse than a bass for Christmas. Only a true monster would place such a Trojan gift beneath the tree for someone they love. Or: what does punk rock have to do with Christian tradition, anyway?
Well—quite a lot. First, bassists are people too, and basses are legitimate—indeed indispensable—instruments in the soundscape of contemporary popular culture. And second, there is a great deal of truth in the words of this particular punk bassist. What if—just as an example—we used Christmas to remember what so often slips away from us in this fast-paced world of incessant background noise? The brief pause between two breaths. The moment to inhale between headlines chasing one another. The stillness at the eye of the storm.
Let us make use of that stillness. Let us share it with our friends and family. Let us not torture one another with compulsive tradition. Let us not allow gift-giving to become an obligation. Let that small moment of calm flicker into being at the center of the storm, without purpose and without pressure. Simply you, with yourself and those you love. Perhaps it‘s less than expected—but perhaps it‘s more than enough.
This year, give yourself—nothing. Give materialism the finger. Your delivery driver will thank you. Be punk.
P.S. Be sure to discuss this form of immaterial self-fulfillment with your family beforehand. If you don‘t, the next holiday might turn out rather lonely for you—and the author would very much like to avoid responsibility for that.
In this spirit … Peace, joy, a pot of steaming mulled wine that never runs dry—and a quiet, contemplative Christmas.