Golden Sunday...

(Text in ENG)

  I don`t know if it is only in Hungary, but we count the last 3 weekends (actually Sundays) back from Christmas: Bronze, Silver and Golden Sunday. That`s when the Christmas sales start and that`s when people start to panic what to buy for presents... usually if you haven`t bought your presents by the Bronze Sunday, you`d had to face mass, hustle, tread on your foot and total exhaustion by the end of the day. And of course, Golden Sunday is the worst: the malls and shopping centers are full with desperate people eager to buy something - anything that might go for a present.

  

 Today is Golden Sunday... I went to the mall nearby to find some presents (as my husband isn`t home, I was hoping I could buy him some surprise), and I had to admit, the last-minute present search is not a unique thing. The mall was stuffed with people looking around for perfumes, clothes, electronics, or already going home with huge boxes and bags.

  So, this is the Christmas feeling in Mexico. The crowd and the enormous (plastic) Christmas trees in or in front of the malls. Maybe it`s only in the capital (and even here there might some places where it is not), but there is no Christmas feeling in 20 degrees celsius... at least, for me.

  Anyway, there are no Christmas songs on the stores and the streets, no light-ups in the city...

  Even in Japan it was better mood (although Japan is not a Christian country)... In Japan the stores start the Christmas songs already a month before Christmas in order to urge people to shop, to buy, to spend money... then the light-ups in the cities which (especially in Tokyo) is a whole attraction and the best date spot in the year. And it`s cold (not minuses but cold enough to feel like winter) and even snows some places.

  I have the feeling (especially now, getting close to end this year) that living in a country of eternal spring, where the seasons hardly change, makes time go by fast. Every day is the same, so you don`t recognize that it`s already December! There is no need to change the clothes in your closet, to rush buying boots for the winter or a new swimming suit for the summer - the time just flows away. We`ve been talking about it with my husband and discussed that it might be a reason for the difference in the way of work and life. People in the temperate zones, where the four seasons can be distinguished clearly, have an urge to finish things by a certain time; there is a circle in the year with deadlines - the wheat has to be heaved at spring, has to be harvested in the autumn etc. But there is no such need to rush in Mexico.

  Anyway, going back to Christmas... it is just weird for me, spending the first Christmas in my life in a warm place, with not much Christmas mood in the air. Even though, I feel like Christmas - that 20 (ok, 30) something year I spent waiting for little Jesus (it`s not Santa bringing the presents in Hungary!), watching the big snow flakes falling from the sky, building snowmen and having snowball battles... all these experience seem to come out automatically this time of the year. I caught myself to croon Christmas songs, keep thinking what to cook for dinner for the 24th, and of course rack my brains what my beloved would be glad for a present...

  A word to one hundred, it seems, it doesn`t matter what part of the world you are, Christmas is not around you, it is within you.

  Merry Christmas to All!