Advent and Nostalgia

Christmas.

A time full of love, joy and cosyness. Full of stress, anxiety and family conflicts.

Every year, I turn into this intolerable double-headed Christmas freak, on the one hand wanting everything to be as it was when I was little, but then on the other hand trying my very best to do all but just that, and creating “our own very amazing traditions”.

It is as if this time of year justifies types of behaviour that at any other time would appear completely intolerable, and because it’s Christmas it’s not only alright, it’s what’s expected. It is what makes Christmas.

Being anal about a certain piece of Christmas decoration that everyone hates, but that needs to go onto the tree because it has always been there every year. Or even more bizarrely; putting on that type of argument about a random piece of decoration to our (only a few years old) Christmas tradition, because that type of behaviour and argument is what’s expected at Christmas. That is truly Christmas. And we savour it.

Why?

Progressive, forward-thinking individuals, struck as if hypnotised by the power of nostalgia. Once a year, every year.

Then we all go back to normal.