In the past few weeks, when our children asked if we were going to see their grandparents for Christmas, we always said: “We don't know.” And in my head - when I thought of Christmas myself - there was always a kind of white wall. Because it was clear that our plans and the way we can celebrate this year depends on Corona. About the dynamics of the number of infections and how politicians react to them.
It was a completely new feeling. And now that the draft resolution for the Prime Minister's Conference on Wednesday was leaked, we said to the children: No, we will not go to see the grandparents. And we won't be able to ask the grandparents to come to us either. Because we don't want to risk being the virus and deathbringer for them. And we don't want to ask them to sit to the fullest between suitcases, gift bags and people who briefly air their masks.
At the dinner table, the children's question: could we not give each other corona tests for Christmas - and then celebrate with the grandparents? A laugh, a silence. And since then we have been trying to imagine what this other Christmas could look like, the first Corona Christmas in our lives.
Let us start with the losses and then work our way to the opportunities, to the traditions that can be saved, transformed, invented. So: no trips. No long-distance trips to the warm. No ski trips with icy-shaped contact orgies in lifts or après-ski. No visits to relatives with trips across the republic. No reunion with the son who is currently living abroad.
No Christmas markets, no twinkling lights at night, no cold feet, no mulled wine and no bag of hot chestnuts. No Christmas concerts, no big Bach levitations and no small performances where children recite their stanzas with pounding hearts. No church services in which we sing “O you happy!”, Sit next to strangers on the wooden benches and feel a touch of charity. Instead, maybe the voice of a priest off-screen, streaming services.
We feel once more: that we have been driven out of public space. That this will be a Christmas of the interiors. That digital life unfortunately also has something very stale and stale. And that Corona ensures that we as sensual people are somehow constantly frustrated - as people who move through the world with their five senses and want to experience something that is different, bigger, more beautiful than what is in their own four Walls.
This Christmas is going to be very domestic, but not very festive. Less stimulating due to the lack of exchange, but probably also less strenuous. Because there are no appointments and a long chain of rather routine Christmas celebrations in offices, schools, kindergartens and clubs. Because nobody wants to expect themselves and others to rumble through some aerosol-laden department stores in search of bargains. Regardless, the gifts are even more Amazon-shaped than they already are. Or do you forego buying anything and give yourself almost nothing: just the joy of being together?
The ambition of perfect preparation of the Christmas menu and the Christmas program is slowed down when there is actually no visitor. But if we are already fasting for contacts: There is no lack of good food and drink this year. There will be enough ingredients and time to cook, bake and peck with a certain amount of dedication.
And then there would be the chance that certain traditions could be celebrated more simply and therefore more emphatically. We can go into the forest to make our own Christmas tree. We can read the Christmas story together at the table and sing the songs that we might otherwise have sung in church in a small group at home.
We can go out into nature, collect wood and make a fire, take long walks with close family members and friends. And because professional activity in many industries has been particularly quiet this time around, there may be even more opportunities for games, conversations and quiet contemplation in a book that has been on our bedside table like a promise for months.
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