I am boon

Celebrating Christmas without tradition

Christmas isn’t a very natural time for me. I have to think hard about things to do and people to see. There hasn’t been a “traditional” Christmas in my life. My parents never celebrated Christmas, and coming from the Far East, Christmas was always either a very Western thing or a very Christian thing.

In London, it gets a bit better since Christmas is this secular thing so you can go shopping and feel like you’re not out of place amongst the tourists. At least you can feel at home as a Londoner bitching about the bad traffic. This is all fine until Christmas day when all the stores shut and the whole country retreat into dining rooms and halls with friends and family. This is the time I have to think about whether to hole up at home with my wife and enjoy a simple dinner, or find a festive goings-on with merry people somewhere.

This year, my uncle and aunt who live in Croydon have decided to exclude us from their traditional Christmas lunch, as I assume their family has grown larger with in-laws and toddlers. This isn’t a bad thing - interacting with extended family members can be a weird experience, because each nuclear family has different ways of doing things. Without a strong cultural glue (e.g. being British), it becomes even more difficult to interact, because there are more assumptions about the way we ought to behave.

I also think that the modern world is forcing people to have more complex (and often competing) worldviews with one another. I, for one, have certain habits that aren’t the norm. I don’t watch TV and don’t watch football or enjoy sports. My hobbies are all about design and technology. I spend a ton of time on online, on Twitter, and I often interact more deeply with my professional connections than my personal connections. In fact, the lines are so blurred for me that I sometimes think of my friends in the industry as “family”.

These worldviews occasionally compete with family traditions and practices, since many of them are based on values and principles. It’s not so much about the big stuff politicians and newspapers badger on about, but the little things people think about. Stuff like whether to have kids or not, or whether to rent or buy, or cooking meals at home vs. eating out, or whether we ought to buy Christmas presents for each other. Conversations like this against opposing views can be tiring and scary, which is not a good thing to have during a festive holiday.

Bad enough that some people only see their extended families once a year. There aren’t many shared memories to form strong relationships on, so the connections are weaker and conversations are more superficial.

Perhaps I’m just ranting because I have to fill this void about a ‘traditional’ Christmas, which I don’t really celebrate. Or, I need to find stuff to talk about that “normal” people talk about, like football, TV and politics - so I don’t feel so out of place amongst extended family. At least here in the UK we can talk about the weather.