Growing up every year I have always had two Christmases. It was confusing growing up and explaining to friends that Santa comes twice to my house. (Personally, I think they were just jealous) but this double visit from Santa can be explained by my parents. Both of my parents were raised with different traditions and different religions and because of this for as long as I can remember I have celebrated two Christmases. My father was raised a Catholic in a Trinidadian household and my mother was raised Orthodox Christian in a Greek household. This of course means that my father grew up celebrating on the 25th like most of the western world and my mother grew up celebrating on January 7th, like many practicing the Orthodox faith.
I remember in elementary school getting an extra day off of winter break so I could celebrate “Greek Christmas” and bragging to my friends about how on the 25th Santa comes, and on the 7th he makes one more visit to us with chocolates. I have always thought that these would be the only two Christmas experiences I would ever have. This wasn’t the case, I began dating a Hungarian a few years back and the festivities now begin sooner than the 25th.
St. Nicholas day is observed by most Catholics but it is most popular in Hungarian culture and is on December 6th each year. So, I now have another Christmas celebration to fill my December calendar with. On St. Nicholas day, “Hungarian Santa” comes and fills your shoes with chocolates or little gifts. So just luckily and by chance I happened to meet someone who has had their fair share of Christmas experiences as well.
Christmas is not only about Santa visits and gifts, it’s about tradition and culture. Luckily for me I have been filled to the brim with festivities and traditions. From my Trinidadian side every Christmas my grandmother makes pastels, which is a patty filled with meat and raisins and wrapped in banana leaves. We have a secret Santa, we laugh, we talk, and there’s calypso music in the background. From my Greek side there is so much food… and then some. It’s not Christmas without tiropita. Which is my favourite, Tiropita is filo pastry squares filled with feta cheese, salty and delicious and a process to make. There’s my Yiayia (which is grandmother in Greek) telling us all to go to church and traditional foods which take all day to make and loads of laughter. There’s joking around with the cousins about how we have an extra day off and the suffering through overnight church services. With my boyfriend’s family we have introduced each other to our different traditions. I had celebrated my first St. Nicholas day with my boyfriend last year and he celebrated his first “Greek Christmas” with us too.
Christmas has meant a lot to me over the years, it’s been times of celebration and getting together with family. It’s been tradition and culture and knowing that one day I may pass on these traditions to my children.
It’s also knowing that not everyone celebrates Christmas. There’s those who celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day and many more. There are so many families who may not celebrate Christmas but still have traditions like my own and will continue to carry them down generation to generation. It is a special and important time in our lives, being given the opportunity to celebrate anything with those that we love.
While this year, our celebrations have looked different, the one thing we know and have are our traditions and our love for our family. Quarantined or not, celebrate each experience you have, create new Christmas traditions and hope for next year that we will all be sitting around the table again. Hopefully next year we will all be back bickering about whose fault it is that the potatoes burnt, whose fault it is that the meat is dry and perhaps quarantined Christmas might have been the best one after all.