Wigilia

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas.

Christmas has always left a fairly sour taste in my mouth, mainly due to my experiences after I turned 5 when my parents separated and subequently divorced.

My sister and I would have to spend Christmas with my father and his new ready made family of wife and 3 step daughters. Very hard to swallow when they lived in relative luxury, received copious gifts and subequently went on tropical holidays, while my sister and I would receive one awful gift each and return home to live in abject poverty while he neglected to pay child support for the following couple of months.

I got over it. But damn did I hate that man and his ilk for many, many years.

In addition, we never grew up with religion and nor did my mum allow us to grow up with materialistic values so you can probably see why Christmas just never really held any kind of sway.

Until I met my partner. And until I had my daughter. And until it became something altogether different for me.

Attending Wigilia (Christmas Eve for Poles) made complete sense to me. OK, there was no meat, but there was a strong sense of family from all corners I’d never really felt but always craved. Plus they’re pretty hardcore. They pray before eating and break those wafer thingies (spot the non-catholic), attend midnight mass and get food blessed and most importantly for Poles argue loudly and passionately across the table 20 times during the meal about all manner of subjects but continuing with the previous topic of conversation after 5 minutes as if there had been no dispute whatsoever.

This all seems completely natural to me when my family tends to brew and stew on perceived sleights and avoid confrontation until someone explodes after years of bottling something normal people would instantly get over. It’s actually a relief to be part of my partner’s crazy family, cos they’re nowhere near as crazy as mine!

Here are some of the things I enjoyed this year.

Watching men with square jaws, broad shoulders in Argentinean rugby tops doing something useful for a change and setting the table.

Children playing dominoes with their grandfathers and humoring him by pretending they have no idea it was him who was playing Santa giving out presents.

Acts of togetherness. Otherwise known as jumping on partner while he snoozes on the couch after a hard day of setting the table and eating 20 potatoes and demanding he hold my hand. Yes I married a bear…