Hey everyone! Dana here.
So of course I'm feeling really happy and delighted to be going home to my parents'
house for Christmas this year.
I spent Christmas here in Germany last year.
But I'm also feeling kind of sad. Why?
Happiness and looking forward to going home for Christmas are the feelings that I would
absolutely expect to feel in this situation.
Sadness, however, is not really an emotion that I would usually associate with
going home for Christmas. But I feel it.
And I think I have gotten to the bottom of why.
Going into my very first Christmas here in Germany without my parents was really hard.
That was back in 2011.
And I just missed having them with me so much, and I missed the holiday traditions that I
had in the U.S. and our own special family holiday traditions.
But in the end, it was a really nice Christmas in Germany, and now I've spent several Christmases
here, and I've made some new holiday traditions in this country that I really love as well.
So this year, I'm just feeling a bit of a pull of emotions.
Yes, I'm really, really excited to go have Christmas with my parents.
But I know that while I'm celebrating over there, I will miss the Christmas traditions
I've cultivated here in Germany.
But it's really a catch-22 because I know that if I were to stay here and have Christmas
in Germany, I would really miss getting to spend Christmas at my parents' house.
Now, from what I've described, it might sound like a lose-lose situation because no
matter where I am, I miss some place else, but it's also a win-win situation, and that's
how I prefer to think about it, because I just feel really grateful that I've come
to feel so at home here in Germany.
It would be way worse if I just dreaded spending Christmas here in Germany,
and only enjoyed Christmas in the U.S.
So yeah, I will happily take this mix of emotions over the alternative any day.
I am really so happy that I feel this at home here in Germany, even over the holidays; a time
when, I know from my own experience, I can feel very homesick and really miss the
country that I grew up in.
But there's also something else going on here.
Over the past 8 years that I've been living here in Europe, a lot has changed.
For one, my parents moved from Florida to Colorado, a place that until they moved there
a few years ago, I had never even been to.
But it goes even deeper than just physical location that has changed.
The move from Florida to Colorado might have made the change more abrupt, more obvious
and glaring, but I think it's also just that, while I've lived over here in Europe,
time has of course not stood still.
My parents have changed.
I have changed.
We've spent Christmases apart.
We've grown as people, me independent from them.
I've stayed in Europe, spent Christmas here for some years instead of "going home" for
Christmas to spend it with my parents.
And my parents have, of course, without me formed their own new traditions and some new
ways of doing things that were never part of our Christmases together before I left the U.S.
Which of course is a good thing!
Time moves forward, people change.
And I am so grateful for the experiences that I've gotten to have living here in Europe,
and I'm super happy for my parents and the new parts of their lives, and I wouldn't
wish for it to be any other way.
Really I wouldn't.
But it does leave me feeling a little nostalgic for the past.
A little sad knowing that whatever Christmas I am going home to this year and any year
in the future, it's never going to be the Christmas of 10 years ago.
That Christmas is gone.
That era, that part of my life is over.
And I can't get it back. There's no getting it back.
Okay, but so, now what?
Now I'm going to go home for Christmas this year and every year in the future feeling sad?
No way! Definitely not.
Happiness and looking forward to the trip are still two of the three things that I was
feeling at the beginning of planning this video.
And now, after thinking through it some more, I'm going to add in another emotion: excited.
This will be Mr. German Man's first Christmas with me in the U.S., and I am so excited to share
with him whatever version of Christmas we will have there.
And I'm also feeling open and looking forward to the future, to creating some altogether
totally new traditions with him and my parents in Colorado.
And who knows, maybe even starting a whole new era of holiday traditions.
So my question for you is: Where are you going to be spending the holidays this year?
Please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching, and liking and commenting and subscribing.
I really hope that you enjoyed this video, and I also hope that you will enjoy the bloopers
that are coming up next.
Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
And I really hope that you enjoyed this video.
And there's some bloopers coming up next.
Which this will probably be in that because it was really weird.
In South Florida I had a white Christmas as well.
It was white because the beach sand was white.
Oh! I've got one little bar left on the battery. Okay, let's see if I can finish the video.
I'm almost done.
Let's see if I can finish it before the battery runs out.
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