Christmas is less exciting the older I grow. It’s nice to spend time with family but the dynamics change a bit and the day itself becomes more exhausting. Maybe it’ll be like this until I have my own family and children and can adopt some of their excitement for the holiday as my own.

Christmas makes me think a lot about culture and family. It’s not a holiday that’s celebrated in China so the things that my family does on the day doesn’t feel like ours either, and a sort of imposter syndrome comes over me and I suddenly feel that everything we do is fake and inauthentic. Our heritage doesn’t celebrate Christmas, why do we?

I guess ultimately it’s a day to spend with people you care about, whatever shape that takes. There’s no prescription on how it should be done. Today we sat around in my Aunt and Uncle’s garage, while my Uncle cooked lamb and chicken on the BBQ and we ate off plates that sat on our laps. It was very unglamorous, nothing at all like the fancy table settings that fill my Instagram feed. But it also felt real – just a bunch of people eating and laughing together on a day where none of us had to work. That’s special.

Meri kirihimete all 🙂