An Expat Christmas

Today's post is written by my good friend John. John and I met in university even though we had kinda known each other from Waterford as well. It was not until college that we really got to be friends. He lives in Brussels now so we don't see much of each other but he will be home over the holidays and I'm looking forward to a catch up!  John isn't exactly a Christmas elf and I'd sooner associate him with the words bah humbug rather then ho ho ho! So you can imagine my surprise when he agreed to write a piece for this series. A Christmas miracle of sorts! I was even more surprised when he wrote something rather sweet. I had been almost expecting a mad rant about how stupid Christmas is! But people will always surprise you right?

I’ll admit, when Chantelle asked me to write up a guest post for her blog, I was two things; charmed that she asked, and confused as to the why. While I don’t want to make myself sound bad, I’m not exactly what you would call the most ... ‘Full of Christmas Spirit’.

Yet, despite this, I’m looking forward to Christmas this year. This is not because Brussels has an abundance of Christmas decorations around town (it doesn’t), or the Christmas songs playing everywhere (they don’t) or the Christmas markets (nice, but mostly small). It mostly has to do with the fact that thanks to the weather last year I ended up missing the day itself and was stuck in Brussels. 

The funny thing is, I didn’t actually mind the missing Christmas day bit, my family have never made the biggest deal of the day itself or have many traditions around presents etc. (beyond the family tradition of not having a clue what to buy for each other). But as with many things in life, you miss it when it doesn’t happen.

Though my family haven’t got a lot of Christmas traditions, there are a few things that I associate with the holiday. My mother cooks pork steak every Christmas morning as part of a fry-up, as it’s something her mother did, and we usually head over to our neighbours for a Christmas hello and a few drinks. Depending on the year, and who’s about, we visit some of my Aunts and Uncles. These visits, along with the drinks I’ll have with friends in town around Christmas Eve, or on the 27^th / 28^th, the New Years drinks I’ll usually have at the local pub early on in the afternoon and the general catch-up that I get with friends and family are what I look forward to.

The other thing that I just want to talk about quickly is the different Christmas is here in Brussels. Now, Brussels is a weird city anyway as much of the expat population is either here temporarily, or will not spend Christmas itself here. This means, that for many of my friends and I, the larger preparations, such as buying in heaps of food, or setting up a Christmas tree, just don’t happen. When it does, it tends to be very small scale, and because we come from many different cultures, the how of celebrating Christmas is quite different. For example, I recently attended an ‘Advent party’ with some German friends. This involved some ‘traditional’ sweets, some Glühwein (mulled wine) and Christmas songs. The idea of marking the beginning of advent was a new one to me, but what really surprised me was that the Christmas songs were not the ones I knew, but were also all very traditional pieces. Apparently the UK/Irish tradition of Bing Crosby, fairytale of New York, Wizzard, and driving home for Christmas are all completely alien to them. In fact, I learned that there aren’t even German ‘pop’ songs that are equivalent, instead Germans play songs that would have been heard in city centres a century ago.

But these small events aside, I have no real sense of it ‘being Christmas’, even though as I write this, the day is a fortnight away. Yet, in many ways I welcome this. Because I can’t bring too much stuff over, I’m not doing big Christmas shopping, because I won’t be in my house for Christmas, I’m not pressured to set up decorations, and as I’m travelling nearly right up to the day, I’m not worried about having to do anything ‘big’ for the season. Instead, I’m looking forward to annoying my dog, hanging out with neighbours and friends I haven’t seen in a while, and most importantly, taking advantage of the fact that my family are also on holidays to spend much needed time with them. For me, especially following a one year ‘break’ from the season, I’m looking forward to the peace and quiet of the season. And I couldn’t be happier about that.