Disclaimer: Following are tried and tested methods. Reader discretion is not advised.
The title is long, but not long enough to qualify as a winding paragraph by itself. Just like having a three or less than three holidays in a row. Long, but not that long. Average, neither here nor there. Like Indian seasons. Either blazing heat rays rain down on you or it’s just a possibility of heat in otherwise chill. But no spring.
24th to 26th December. Holiday time. Actually, it began on 23rd for most, what with it being fourth Saturday or just a day prior to Sunday, which is the true moniker for Saturday. Not the sixth day of the week, but the day before Sunday. Saturday has no existence by itself.
Anyway.
Today is Boxing Day. A holiday in many white countries across the world, and selectively distributed in India. It’s a day steeped in rich colonial history and has something to do with boxes.
But no matter the glamour of festivities, courtesy Home Alone 1 and 2 and The Polar Express, and other such feel-good Christmas movies, I found myself boxed in my apartment, while the world hailed Christ and non-/Christians frolicked with their endless list of cousins, friends or travelling/wandering aimlessly all over. It is a restless sort of feeling, for come Tuesday or Monday, it’s back to a week after boring week of thankless labour and all you want to do is live it up in these few days, and be recharged enough to plan your next weekend well in advance. Unfortunately though, I had no means to have a jolly merry Christmas. Why?
- Uh..how are we related?: Growing up in a nuclear family does that to you, and hence I belong to that few, who are clueless about the know-hows of their cousins and the family at large.
- I want to go home! But you are already home: Most go home on such short duration leaves. But for me, the tree is in the same place as the money plant. And, getting tickets to anyplace during national holidays is as good as getting a Justin Beiber concert ticket for free.
- Excuse me. Sorry. Could you kindly stop blocking the path by your being?: Crowded everything. On days like this you realize that you are not unique, for everyone thinks like you, regarding outings and get-together. Holing up in your home is better than being dug out to face the stampede of an ecstatic mankind.
So what do people like us do? Friends with their families in another city, massive rush everywhere you look, no matter what the size of the population of your country be, and travelling far and wide is just not an option. What’s to be done?
The 5Gs in the grand time of sickeningly cheery good morning messages laced with cringing Christmas wishes, and gestating merriment are:
Let’s see what we can do to keep ourselves happy.
Observation: creatively help around in the household by learning some survival skills along the way.
Yet another Christmas has come and gone. Boxing Day, symbolically a day of peaceful reflection over the merriment of the prior days, steadily slips into a siesta, soon to end, as the sun will descend to rise again the next day.
Every festival, no matter where you are, no matter who you are, what you are, whether a believer, atheist, agnost, or however you choose to call your relation with God or the Universe, festivities are not meant to be holed into assumed captivity, but to make our holidays whole with self-love, and fill our fast depleting days with the happiness of being alive.
Live. Enjoy. For Christ didn’t die for our sins for the heck of it, but for a chance to be better versions of what we are now.
Preachy much?
