Celebrate Christmas in Europe

The atmosphere of a medieval holiday in Strasbourg, noisy Christmas markets in Munich and Vienna, Brussels that looks like an elegant toy … The Christmas holidays familiar from foreign films in reality exceed all expectations: mulled wine and ice skating, music, amazing Christmas tree decorations and souvenir shops on sparkling squares . It is not difficult to get into a fairy tale, however, it does not last long – rarely more than three weeks. But which of the above is not available in Russia today and what makes us, on the eve of our own New Year holidays, “The Irony of Fate” and Olivier, pine needles and tangerines, rush to foreign countries, to someone else’s, generally speaking, fire?

Fulfill the dream. “Western Christmas pictures have been imprinted in our minds along with Disney cartoons, as something inaccessible and very desirable; to find yourself in this magic means to fulfill your pipe dream, – explains psychoanalyst Svetlana Fedorova. “Our inner child is still waiting for a miracle, and we are ashamed of this: after all, adults know very well that miracles do not exist.” Spared from the hassle of the holidays, we can escape for a while to our childhood, carelessly window-shopping and laughing at the puppet show without fear of judgment.

Feel the warmth of the “parents”. “When I walk around the Parisian fairs in December, for some reason I feel like an orphan who dreams of being adopted as soon as possible by these prosperous parents,” says 42-year-old Muscovite Olga. “At some point, we all stop idealizing our own parents, moreover, we are often ready to abandon them and come up with new, more perfect ones,” explains Svetlana Fedorova. – Such an “orphan” feeling can also echo our shame of our own roots. Getting on a plane, we run away from our identity, distance ourselves from our eastern origin, split off and leave our “bad”, archaic part in our homeland, and we find everything “good”, cultural, predictable, abroad.”

Return to yourself. “In Europe, everyone is very polite, correct,” recalls 30-year-old Irina. “But one day, seven months pregnant, I ended up at the mall on the first day of sales. I was shocked: crowds of people demolished each other, clothes lay on the floor, they pushed me, and no one apologized. We are pleased to see the front side of European life and identify ourselves with it. In any culture there is something alive, wrong, “uncivilized”. And if we manage to perceive Western traditions in all their integrity, then we begin to look at our own with different eyes. Perhaps, having looked into the neighboring park after a long break on New Year’s Eve, we will suddenly be pleasantly surprised at the sincere unity of strangers to each other and feel something special and warm in the atmosphere of a home holiday.

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