Merry Christmas!!!

Before I post my blog post, I want to wish all of my family and friends a Merry Christmas back home!  Enjoy the warmth of your loved ones (and your central heating), get fat with turkey, beef, and cookies (so envious right now…), and find peace when you celebrate religiously.

So today, as I woke up and entered my bathroom, I realized- whoa, it's Christmas!  I guess that can say a lot about how the holidays feel here.  Technically, Christmas falls on January 8 in Macedonia (Orthodox calendar), so I have a few more weeks of Christmas time left.  However, I have not really felt the Christmas spirit during my time in Macedonia, and I cannot explain why.  I do not see it as a sad thing, but it is quite curious.

This lack of holiday cheer is not due to a lack of effort.  I have been trying to recreate an American Christmas in many ways.  I listen to my brother’s Spotify Christmas playlist almost everyday.  The center is filled with Christmas lights and decorations, so I try to breathe it all in when I am there.  I am celebrating American Christmas three times, once already on Ohrid, today with the French at a Macedonain restaurant, and tomorrow with the American PCVs over breakfast for dinner.  Yet, despite all of this, I am just not feeling the Christmas spirit.

I have meditated on these thoughts a lot, but it is tough to find the source.  I miss my family, but not any more than I typically have missed them during my time here.  Living in a Christian nation that is cold in December replicates the atmosphere back in Chicago, but the sentiments are still hard to grasp.  Part of me thinks that it is the lack of commercial urgency that makes me feel this way.  Buying Christmas gifts for family and friends is not a Macedonian tradition, even on Macedonian Christmas.  Back home, as the days passed in December, buying Christmas gifts for my family and friends was always at the top of my mind.  But in many ways, I am thankful that I do not have to buy presents for anybody this year (plus, on the PC budget, I am too poor to buy anything worthwhile).

And so, after the conclusion of much meditation, I attribute my lack of enthusiasm to two things. First, I have not fully felt comfortable in my site, so my thoughts of integrating and feeling productive have probably superseded any longings for holiday cheer.  Work is slow, and will continue to be as my counterparts have exams and celebrate the holidays over the coming weeks.  Yet, even if I felt fully useful and integrated into my site, I do not think that I would be able to replicate the Christmas back home.  While certain holidays share common traditions that can be celebrated communally (like Independence Day, Halloween, or Thanksgiving), Christmas is so magical because each family has its own set of traditions.  When are presents opened, who comes over, or who goes where, what is cooked and eaten, etc.  Despite the amount of Westerners who are in Prilep, we cannot celebrate Western Christmas in a way that suits us all.  Not only do Americans celebrate Christmas differently than the French and Spanish, but we celebrate Christmas in different ways among ourselves.  Therefore, we have all decided to celebrate in a local way, dining at a Macedonian restaurant tonight.

The second reason why I think I am lacking any holiday is cheer is that I have not really had an opportunity to think about the religious importance of Christmas.  Macedonia is a post-communist country, and even though I am not zealous Christian, my beliefs are above average compared to those of the average PCV.  There are no Catholic churches in my town, and Macedonians rarely attend anything religious outside of slavas or special celebrations.  So it has been tough to mentally think of this holiday as the birth of Christ.  In the end, it does not really matter to me whether or not I meditate strongly on religious significances like these.  I have made peace with myself by thinking that, as long as I am selfless in my service as a PCV, missing mass and failing to observe Catholic dogma are things that can be forgiven.  So to put it simply, my Charlie Brown search for Christmas ended in a Linus-like realization.

So there you have it- the reflections of Catholic PCV on holiday cheer in a European, Christian country.  Not everybody feels the same as me, and everybody’s experience will be different this holiday time.  Yet, maybe it will help those who read this appreciate more all that they have and bask in the comfort and familiarity of their holiday celebrations and traditions.  Merry Christmas!