Christmas time...

When it comes to Christmas, I…

Firstly, keep a cool head and don’t indulge in pre-Christmas spending spree. In the consumerist world Christmas means an opportunity to lash out money for gifts. The gift-giving craze is an excellent way to make up for too little time spent with the nearest and dearest over the passing year.

Secondly, I’m not fond pre-Christmas rush. Psychologists in unison list Christmas among ten most stressful events in human lives. Manifold stressful situations, although in their nature dissimilar to one another, have one common feature, namely they put an individual under pressure. The less pressure, the lower the bar raised, the more peaceful your Christmas will be. Sometimes disasters strike out of the blue. Yesterday the kitchen tap in my house simply disintegrated. Before I rushed to the garage to switch off the water valve, there was a huge dirty puddle behind the sink and the oven. Cleaning it up, taking a trip to the DIY shop to buy a new tap and installing it meant four hours unexpectedly wiped out off the weekend. The timing could not have been more imperfect.

Thirdly, I take the opportunity to slow down. Unlike many people I hardly ever take any day off during the Christmas Tide as affairs at work almost come to a standstill. I prefer to take holidays in hectic periods (never during school holidays) than when I can loaf about for most of some seven hours spent in the office. This year the “ticking-over phase” will commence on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow I am about to keep late hours at a client’s, on Tuesday the subsequent job will have to be done. In 2015 business will begin to spin at full steam in February, since after Epiphany everyone will be waiting for winter school holidays, in 2015 scheduled for last two weeks of January. More on slowing down and rethinking some stuff next week…

Fourthly, I’m particularly sensitive to hypocrisy. I loathe when somebody who hates me guts temporarily is nice to me just because Christmas is coming, if I know they will not change their attitude towards me when Yule is gone.

Because of the yesterday’s breakdown, I am slightly short of time, I had to choose either to write a longer note, or to take a lonely evening walk and contemplate Christmas decorations in NI (I spotted surprisingly few Christmas lightings both in- and outdoors). I chose the latter, much healthier way of spending spare time. Predictably, weather for Christmas will be anything, but winter-like. Forecasters foresee temperatures well above zero and blustery autumnal gloom. Snow and frost were last witnessed in Warsaw during Christmas in abundance in 2002. In 2003 there was some little snow and little frost and since then there was either melting snow during thaw (2009, 2010, 2012) or frost, yet without lying snow (2007). The weather pattern of Christmas thaw makes me even more fed up with kitschy Christmas adverts showing winter scenery…

I wish you all, your families and friends a peaceful and joyful Christmas. May these shortest days in the year purposefully lit up by colourful lights abound in rejoice and serenity and be the time you recharge batteries for the next weeks.