I don’t understand people who don’t like Christmas and I don’t because I don’t want to.
I refuse to “see the glass full empty” and I don’t want to hear the negative part of it. I want to share, I want to laugh, I want to forgive, I want to smile, I want to be happy and if there’s a time of the year when I focus in nothing but being happy and positive is during Christmas and I spread that feeling as much as I can.
I understand missing people during Christmas because they’re gone. Daddy’s bday used to be the 23rd so I damn know how the empty space in my life feels. I’ve spent Christmas away from home and this is going to be one. Although I’ve stopped calling Ecuador home because I feel like home wherever I feel loved, so I’m lucky that I have a few places and people that I now call them “home”.
I also understand people struggling with their finances during Christmas. It’s happened to me too and to my own family. My favourite story is my first Christmas… Dad didn’t know what to get me with little to no-money so his friend had a toy store and my dad told him he’d pay him later but that he needed a Christmas present for me that Christmas eve, his friend helped him so dad got me a Teddy-bear to whom I called Jorge Luis del Olmo (George Louis in English) or as my mum called him, the Rubiroso. He was and still is my favourite childhood and adulthood memory.
I wish I still had Jorge Luis del Olmo, he used to come with me to every new country, but destiny had other plans for us in 2017 when I lost my dad and lost George. Hardest year ever! But that year in April, hope was born, Georgie, who up until now brings joy to those who need him and warms my heart every time I think of him. I am sure he feels me, he misses me and loves me as much as I do.
Miles apart, together at heart.
And then I also understand the feeling of not being around my family. Mum used to decorate our house in November. I remember the feeling of getting up one November day and the house would be decorated as if Santa lived there, mum stayed up until late decorating it. This year she didn't do it and it broke my heart, I'm not even there but to think of my childhood house with no Christmas decorations was not an easy moment. I, however, set up my first Christmas tree, got some Christmas decorations and I just enjoy what I have now.
However, it aches that my sister and my mum are both in different countries as well, both of them missing each other, missing me, missing Christmas dinner together. I remember reading that whoever wrote “Silent night” for Christmas obviously did not have a Latina family. We’re not silent at all, but that’s the beauty of Christmas in Latin America, everyone getting ready, helping in the kitchen, playing with the kids, with the dogs, or just watching a film while everything and everyone is getting ready… yeah, I will miss all that this year but on the other hand, I’ll spend my first Irish Christmas and I'm so curious about it.
Ireland has been so generous to me this year that I need to live and leave my Christmas spirit this year here. I can’t and won’t pretend I don’t miss all the above but I can share some time in the kitchen with Seamus or just have an Irish coffee with his brother and mum, can and will go out with him and his friends to pubs on Christmas eve, will be wearing my Christmas jumper, and I’ll do that with all the love in my heart because no matter where I go, Christmas is part of me and I adjust myself to Christmas.
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