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| Due to similar sounding names in Chinese, many people give friends apples on Christmas Eve. |
Christmas is a big holiday.
Christmas is the day that airports are clogged.
It is the day families see each other again.
Christmas is when people are most stressed.
All of the stores are decorated and play music for two months in preparation for it.
Christmas is Christian, yet it is so widespread, so popular, so much a cultural monolith, that it has almost, though not quite, been separated from its religions origins.
Christmas is when many people who are not home become homesick.
The timing of Christmas is almost perfect for homesickness abroad. Throughout one's time abroad, or at least for the first year or two, one experiences an emotional roller coaster. One meet challenges and on alternating occasions succeed or fail at overcoming them. On some days the triumphs seem larger than the failings, and one feels brave, smart, and confident. On others, the failures pile up and everything seems too large, too different, and the small gains feel pointless. It's strange, but I have had some weeks where my entire outlook on life turns a full one hundred and eighty degrees over the course of just seven days. One of the larges downturns most people experience happens about three to four months after first arriving in a new country. Among other things, there is a feeling of being tired, and just wanting to go back to where everything was 'normal' and made sense. One's first time, you could wonder if coming to this new country was the biggest mistake of your life. That was my thinking last Christmas I was away from home. This year I just feel like I need a vacation for a week, then I'll be back for more.
Christmas can make these feelings more poignant since it has such sentimental value. If one has friends who are going home for the holidays, it might not help matters. In Japan, many of my friends were only staying for one semester. Some of them were especially homesick. I had managed to feel almost no homesickness for nearly four months, but after hearing them talk about how excited they were to go home it started to hit me. I had also had some person difficulties and was beginning to doubt not only my language ability, but whether I was likable as a person. In addition, my mother had been planning to visit Japan during Christmas, but since the plane tickets to visit for New Years Day were significantly less expensive, her visit was delayed a week. I left my host family on Christmas Eve and moved into a hostel in Osaka. My memories of that Christmas Eve and Christmas day are of feeling isolated, lonely, and free at the same time.*
I walked through downtown Osaka, where expensive stores for suits and books had classy Christmas decorations that would have been at home on 5th Avenue. The trees down the boulevard were wrapped around the trunks with lights. I passed columns of yellow, blue, and magenta as I passed clusters of people on their way to underground restaurants.
I strolled through the Osaka Illumination, where lights of every color wrapped every individual branch of the trees. Food stall employees shouted their welcome as a much quieter audience slowly shuffled through the assigned pathway, stopping occasionally to take pictures. Music played and the lights flashed in time to match it.
I stood on a train platform, waiting for the train to Doubutsuen station. One of the trains that stops at my platform is completely packed. Through the window I see a man dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He appears as nonchalant as the other passengers. In a moment, the train has vanished and the man in the Santa suit with it.
I sat at my computer checking my facebook page as a church down the street from my hostel played Christmas music out onto the street. I could hear silent night being played, the tune familiar, the lyrics entirely alien.
The afternoon and evening of Christmas day I spent with my friends Maarika and Rose. We decorated Christmas cakes, the only widespread Christmas tradition in Japan, with Maarika's friends from koto club. Then the three of us went to karaoke.
This year's Christmas was in almost every way different. Most of the people I interact with on a day to day basis are not going home to the United States for the holidays. We teachers wouldn't be able to go back even if we wanted to – or at least we wouldn't be able to go back for more than a single day if that. Though I feel myself retreating into English a great deal of the time and know that I could potentially improve my language skills a good deal more than I have been, I am confident in the fact that I have progressed a great deal since I first arrived. I am getting along well with all the people I interact with on a daily basis. I find myself actually becoming homesick for Japan more so than for the United States, and can recognize the negative feelings I do have, of being bored, as being very similar to two years ago. Not only do I recognize it, I know the cure. Travel and vacation. Both of which are coming so soon I can almost taste it.
Today we, the five foreigners in the compound, had breakfast together. Adam made french toast, which we all enjoyed. I had lunch with my student Sydney. Adam, Ben, and Ben's girlfriend visited a church, an experience which I will not do justice to in the retelling, so I would encourage people to look at their blogs. We exchanged Secrete Santa gifts. And we had peking duck for dinner along with four Chinese friends. Our conversation traveled quickly over some very dark or dirty topics, but the atmosphere was warm and light. We got to watch our duck being carved. We bemoaned the fact that there are no longer any sanlongche.** We retired to our rooms.
And I found myself looking at the past, as if the years are layered on top of one another like stacks of paper or a folded blanket. It was as if I could remove any number of sheets and see whichever Christmas of my past I should want – as each day is connected to itself in the past. I have done this with other days, not only Christmas, but Christmas is special since so many of us look back then. I remembered fragments of things I remember writing which have since become lost to cyber space. I feel content, nostalgic, and a bit restless all at the same time. And it is this feeling, this nostalgia mixed with restlessness, a restlessness I can explain, while feeling at the same time so lucky to know the people I know, it is this that I want to share with you, dear reader. Merry Christmas, dear reader, even if you don't celebrate Christmas. Merry Christmas from two countries that have embraced the trappings of Christmas without ever absorbing its religious meaning.
*There are several videos and photographs from this time which are on my facebook page, including a video of the illumination in Osaka. I no longer have the hard copy to upload here, but I would encourage family and friends to watch it. On an unrelated note, though these memories all happened within a few days of each other, I don't remember the order. I know for certain they did not all happen the same day, though I realize the phrasing may make it seem otherwise.
** Sanlongche are three-wheeled motorcycle cabs which have recently been banned in Kaifeng and replaced with a more tourist friendly but available bicycle version. For more details, including a song about them, please visit Eaaf or Ben's blogs, as both have written very good posts on the topic.
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