Metamorphosis of Our
Christmas 2006
OR balancing out old world traditions
In the past years we celebrated Christmas as usual - as it had become family tradition: we met around noon on Dec 24th the day Germans call Holy Evening (HA). We met at the parents place to take a light lunch at the orderly decorated Christmas table. The discussions between all family members created a mind setting atmosphere for the things to come. Unnoticed by the playing or resting children the “Christkind” decorated the tree that had not been hidden up to this point in a separate room. Coffee and Cacao and sometimes even Glühwein served with some cookies marked the end of the preparation. Everyone waited with excitement for the little bells to ring and the door to be opened where Christkind had prepared the tree and the presents.
When dawn started to sink all waiting had come to an end: The doors were opened as the sound of the little bell became louder and was gradually replaced by the sound of big bells of famous cathedrals around the world. Into focus came the Christmas tree with its incredible soft glow of enlightened candles shedding light on all faces. Particularly the shiny eyes of the younger family members reflected their thrill and excitement to see the festively decorated tree in his splendor and magnificence.
As all
family members sat down the Christmas story was red
in various versions and languages including German,
French, Italian, Latin or English as well as a free
family generated modern Christmas story that
honored the history including pre-Christian
records. Then greetings were exchanged poems
recited and violin guitar, piano and flute used to
play prepared pieces of the season. For the little
ones this part took always too long as they wanted
to get to the presents spread underneath the
Christmas tree and surrounded by an ever running
gauge I train.
The evening ended with a meal mostly including
vol-au-vent and subsequent playing with presents.
Sometimes we went to the midnight mass afterwards,
but the priests ran out of interesting new topics
for that mass and so the desire to go faded with
time. On the first Christmas day we reunified to
enjoy the Christmas dinner, which included a
masterly prepared goose.
This year,
however, our Christmas celebration will be
thoroughly changed. Our children want to
commemorate their own Christmas by merging their
own customs with their partner’s
traditions of the new world. That means
"Bescherung" =(Distribution of Christmas
presents). Sorry there is no appropriate English
word happens on the morning of Christmas day and
of HA’s wisdom changes to a different
logic. As a result we will celebrate our HA
without the entire family this year. What
remains is our Christmas meal with the family
united on the late Christmas day afternoon.
We are glad that generation liberating forces have
not led to the metamorphosis earlier. Somehow we
always sensed that changes were about to happen and
that our children, at one point, would want to
celebrate on their own terms and build their
personal traditions. We are glad, however, that
Annemarei with her family of four recently (on
Sept. 2 2006) enriched by Daphne will be able to
celebrate our last family Christmas together with
us here at home. On Jan 2 they will move to the
other side of the globe – to New Zealand.
We wish all our friends to whom the balancing out
of family traditions is pending the necessary
temperance and peacefulness to be in command when
it happens and we combine with best whishes for a
merry Christmas and a happy new year 2007
Heidi und Dietmar
PS: You will find more about our year 2006 on our webpages: Website http://www.wittmann.us/x-mas/Index-Christmas.htm