Christmas Eve 2025


For me, Christmas Eve is the most emotionally charged day of the year.  Over the course of my life, it was a priority to be home for Christmas.  I despise religion and it was my first awakening as a teenager to call out religion as a fraud.  Nonetheless, our Christmas tradition involved ethnic foods,  visiting relatives, reuniting with family, telling stories, and music.  These are all things that resonate deeply with me.  Regardless of priorities of my siblings, I would be home for Christmas to be with my parents to continue these traditions.  I would accompany my Mom to visit relatives houses over a several day period. 

From the time we come into this world, we are looking to understand who we are and where we are at.  Our parents, family, and home give us our bearings.  We learn our immediate environment.  The more that that is deconstructed, the more we struggle to understand this place. 

My parents bought their first home in the early 70's only to be destroyed by a flood a few months later.  It was traumatic to leave the apartment that I spent my early years in, and then to have everything destroyed by a flood.  

University and jobs destroy families and relatives.  I remember my Aunt moving to the big city when I was very young, hours away and how it started to rip apart our family. In my core family, universities and pursuit of jobs destroyed our family.  I firmly believe this tactic was done purposely by this civilization.  Eventually, my parents moved to be with one of my siblings, thousands of miles away, sold our house, and another chapter burned.  

My parents  left this place years ago, emotionally neglected.   

I have learned to make some of the traditional Polish foods that my Mom made.  I will be enjoying some of  those tonight dwelling in memories of the past. 

There is no happy ending aside from the one that you create.  

This song launched the beginning of our Christmas Eve each year, as my grandmother searched the sky for the first star.

I share it this evening....



Comments

  1. I feel you. We used to have family gatherings for Christmas Eve with all the traditional foods and music and people would happily talk to each other about all kinds of things, and now it's not happening anymore. There is less connection between people these days, even family members, as the devolution of society happens more and more.
    I used to love this time of the year, but now I somehow have less emotional attachment to it, but the memories always comeback.
    And btw my mother used to play the same song that you posted when we sat at the specifically decorated table and started eating the traditional foods.
    Anyway, as we say in Poland: Wesołych Świąt!

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  2. Luke, Thank you so much for your memories and kind wishes. The similarity in the special nature of Bog Sie Rodzi in our lives is striking. Your recollections brightened my evening as I imagine what you describe. I share the oplatek with you...Merry Christmas, Luke db

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