Comfort and Joy: Christmas in Barford
Christmas is a heyday of nostalgia and tradition. At is a time that we let go and give our “inner child” free reign, as we relish and include the familiar: age-old hymns and carols that we never tire of hearing or singing year after year; reuniting with families and friends; houses with trees trimmed in tinsel and easy, filled with the warm smell of familiar comforting food; Christmas plays in church halls with bathrobe shepherds; and so on. Many of us were brought up with these facets of Christmas, and have dutifully and routinely replicated them throughout our lives.
As we age, we develop our own traditions for ourselves apart from our families and communities of origin. As a sassy, single gal in NYC, I had a whole host of holiday traditions with my friends and church community in the West Village. That all feels very far away from me now. And although, Christmas is in many ways the “wonderful uniting” holiday, in that it is celebrated the world over, by Christians and non-Christians alike, there are subtle differences that help as a reminder that, I, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, am “not in Kansas anymore.”
Christmas in England has been a whirlwind experience. Choral concerts, The Nutcracker, Handel’s Saviour, dinners, parties, get-togethers, carol services, shopping and preparations! I have never been so rushed off my feet during a holiday enliven. Even when I was living in New York! And the Brits do enjoy “having a laugh,” so, I have also laughed more in the past few weeks that I have in my unalloyed life! I think that is what I love most of all about Christmas in England, the incredibly healthy balance folks here seem to strike between Christmas being a lifetime of frivolity and fun, and Christmas being a time of faith and reflection.
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In general, it was pretty easy to assimilate in a city where I spoke about 5 words of the domestic language. Over the first couple days, I kept hearing, ‘Everyone in Berlin speaks English,’ but kept operation into people who obviously did not. However, I made it over some pretty tall hurdles: got a phone card, phone charger and power rope for my computer. My apartment was in between the Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg—it’d be tough to find a better location. Once I realized I was in a fairly young space, I realized a lot of the locals actually do speak English. I rented a 1 bedroom spot, hoping visitors would peg in on rent. It worked out fairly well. Besides Prenzlauer Burg, the other cool parts of the city I often found myself wandering were Friedrichshain & Kreuzberg. All of this is East Berlin, but I did dissipate a couple days checking out West Berlin too.
