Christmas is one of the most popular festivals across the globe and one that a lot of people celebrate. While I don't celebrate it properly since I am a Muslim and mainly because I don't have many Christian friends here that I can celebrate Christmas with or join in their celebrations, I do love Christmas a lot and like to be involved in the occasion in whatever way I can.
Today is Christmas Eve and I'd like to wish Merry Christmas to all those who are celebrating across the globe and all my amazing Steemit friends and community members. A very Happy Christmas to you and may this evening be full of joy, warmth and serenity for you and pave way for many more such times to come.
Why I love Christmas
Ever since I was 9 years old, I have been watching lots of movies and cartoons that showcased and highlighted Christmas or revolved around the festival. So I often used to watch families sitting together drinking warm beverages, opening presents lying under the Christmas tree, taking out presents from their stockings and wishing friends and family Merry Christmas, and having a really happy, fun time together. All of this resonated with a lot of what we did on Eid and presented a beautiful atmosphere to me which I always yearned for. I had great times with my loved ones as a child and the different representations of Christmas that I saw on television made me miss those times more.
Also, I loved the idea of Santa Claus and him distributing presents to children who had been good over the year and I longed to receive presents from him as a kid. As I grew older, I did discover there is no actual Santa Claus and that people are dressed like him, but I still enjoyed the concept of it.
Hence, Christmas for me slowly turned into a very special occasion that brought loved ones together and gave them a chance to bond. Oh, before I forget, I am in love with Christmas trees especially those decorated beautifully so another reason why I am nuts about Christmas.
As I grew older and got a chance to talk to people who actually celebrated Christmas and I learned that it is not always a very happy time for everyone, and for some people, Christmas is quite a tough time. This revelation was quite a difficult one for me to digest mainly because I had been in love with the occasion for a long time and believed it was some sort of magical festival that came with only happy and good things and no negativity at all. So at first, I could not accept this at all.
However, with time I analyzed the occasion and many other occasions and festivals and I realized that no festival or celebration in itself is a happy or sad one, but it is the people associated with it and those who celebrate it that make it happy and enjoyable or otherwise. If Christmas was a hard time for some people, it wasn't because of some bad vibe with the festival, but mainly because some people find it hard to be around family or to settle in with them easily. Most of the people I talked to who didn't enjoy Christmas much was because they had sort of become distant from their families and when they had to be with them for even 3 days on Christmas, it was too much of a task for them. Usually that happened because the children had grown up to be people their families didn't really want them to be and didn't accept them openly and this created a rift between then.
I then compared these findings with what happened in families here over Eid and other festivals and occasions that Muslim families celebrated together. Often, loved ones here go through tough times on Eid and that was mainly because of the same reason- conflicts, disagreements and a lack of acceptance. This is more or less the same with every occasion. Be it Christmas, Eid, Diwali or any other happy festival, if the loved ones are happy around one another, it would be a happy occasion for them; but if they have conflicts or disagreements, the happy festival would become a difficult one for them.
This year, Eid-ul-Fitar which is one of the two main Eids Muslim celebrate, was a hard occasion for me. I was very excited about it, but sadly, it didn't turn out to be the way I wanted it to turn out. My family (Yasir, my husband, me and my son Faateh) had just moved to a bigger, nicer house than the one we lived in before and I was excited to celebrate Eid there. However, my husband and I were going through some emotional and personal issues and because of that, a rift had created between us. We weren't talking to each other happily and weren't even interested in being around each other let alone visiting family together. So the end result was terrible- we fought over the 3 days of Eid and not once did we have a happy time together.
That time made me recall my findings about Christmas was hard for some people. Instead of blaming that Eid for being unkind to us, I made a commitment to myself that I won't ever have a bad Eid with my husband and family again. So I slowly made improvements to my behavior and started bridging the communication gap that had emerged between us. It took me about 4 weeks to sort out the conflict but eventually my husband and I did manage to come back to each other with open arms and after that, we had a much better Eid-ul-Adha together which is the second main Eid we celebrate.
I do hope you and your loved ones are having a great time together, but if you are not having a good time or the time you desired to have, find out the real issue and dig deeper into it. Be open and big enough to talk to your family members and find out why they aren't feeling comfortable or express your concerns to them. I know it can be hard to talk to family at times, but trust me it isn't impossible and its results are often quite good.
Wishing all of you a great Christmas again. Lots of love for all of you.
Love and light,
Sharoon.
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