Think of your favorite Christmas song. Maybe narrow it down
to your favorite non church Christmas song, one of the ones they play on repeat
in the stores 24-7 starting before the turkey dinner has fully digested in your
stomach (if not sooner). Then think of your least favorite song, or the one the
gets stuck in your head the most. Look at the lyrics. I’m willing to bet that
it has the words “snow”, “cold”, “fire”, “white”, or some other reference to the
weather, or temperature, or some cold weather activity like drinking hot
chocolate or roasting chestnuts. I know that personally, when I summon images
of Christmas and the Holidays to mind, I think of snow (or at least in my home
town, cold rain). It would be hard to imagine Christmas in the middle of summer,
right? Welcome to the southern hemisphere. It was 80-85° on Christmas Day. The
house I was at had a pool, and it was utilized. Most people go to the beach as
their after Christmas lunch tradition. I mean, the saying “Christmas in July”
in practice, isn’t as nice as one would think. And that was just one of the
things I had to adjust to.
I’ll be honest, it was a little difficult to get in the
“Christmas Spirit”. Part of it was the weather. Part of it was the lack on
over-commercialization (They don’t play Christmas songs 24-7 everywhere here
along with adverts every 5 seconds. Or at least I wasn’t in the shops as much
as I usually am). Part of it was the loneliness. The holidays are inherently a
family-and-friend centric time period. I don’t spend a whole lot of time with
my family, we haven’t taken any long holiday trips in a while, but we still spend
time together, and Christmas day is celebrated with them and with my family in
Charleston. I think that is one of the aspects that contributed the most to my lack
of feeling like it was Christmas. The days leading up to the holiday were spent
much like I would any other day in the care center. Sure, the other workers had
some holiday spirit, but it didn’t quite touch me as much as in previous years.
Even helping decorate the center didn’t do much to improve my eagerness. (Fake)
pine trees seem to clash with the bright sunny exterior. Santa in his big red
coat seems ridiculous when it is upwards of 80 regularly (he would roast alive,
I know I do and I have appropriate clothing). Even putting up snow-in-a-can
couldn’t help, because it is a sup-par substitute for the real thing. There is
no way around it, being alone during the holidays is very tough.
This experience gives me a much better understanding of the
international students I encountered in my time as a Resident Advisor for
Marshall University. If anything, I wish I could have learned this experience
earlier in life. If I could go back, I would have done a lot more to try and
include those international students around holiday times. In fact, if any of
my former colleagues, or anyone who works in residence life is reading this, I
would suggest strongly taking this to heart, and reaching out to them. It’s one
thing to know as a concept how hard it is to be away from one’s family and
friends during the holidays, it’s an entirely different thing to experience the
crushing loneliness and feelings of depression and isolation one can incur. It
also allows me to understand the international student’s tendencies to clump
together and not branch outside of their fellow international students. Having
someone from back home, even if it is a completely different part of the
country, can be comforting when everyone around you seems different than
yourself. I know spending the holidays with the other YASC members that are
stationed in Tanzania and other parts of South Africa made it much more
bearable for me. But our shenanigans in Cape Town are a story for another blog
post.
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