Dresdner Stollen or how I try to give Christmas a second chance

So... I started writing this yesterday, but right now I am at my workplace which is beautifully decorated, and there's an artificial fireplace and a nice big natural Christmas tree and a lot of decorations, and I'm tired and on my 4th cup of coffee and it's been a bit of a hard day and I would like to talk about it to someone but I can't so all in all I am still having very mixed feelings about this Christmas. But let's just say I decided to give Christmas a second chance and let myself be won over by all those beautiful things that happen around this time of the year.
This Advent, as I was looking towards Christmas I began to realize more and more that I do not wish to celebrate it this year: not another Christmas sad and alone, not trying to fill the void and the absence of the one I love with decorations and chocolate. I don't want to celebrate Christmas not even a little bit, not even at all since it is clear to me that I will be alone, yet surrounded by too many people. And since I can't spend these days with the one I love the most, all I really want is having the possibility of going somewhere where I don't know a soul. Somewhere I am completely alone and I can go to Mass, then take a long long midnight walk around a pretty burg. But out of various reasons that is not possible. So here I am, caught between moaning about this year's Christmas and swinging and singing to Benedict, the 6 months wonder I babysit.
So I decided I needed to do something special, something I wanted to do in a long while, something that would make me feel better. So I decided baking a Dresdner Stollen. Because it's Jesus's birthday, and though I said I wouldn't go, someone wise told me: "That's perfectly fine. But you can't stop Him from coming to you." And that's true, and I kind of hope He'll come and I thought it would be nice having a piece of the most wonderful Christmas cake in the world on the table. And there's another thing: I like to make-believe. So I just pretended that one of the Stollens will get to the one I love. I just pretended he'll love it, I just pretended he'll be happy to know I made it and to know I made one for him too. Oh yes, and I made the marzipan myself, too.

I love backing. I simply love that. The oven (which I don't possess at home) is the only thing I miss about my parents's house. So yesterday I went there and I started preparing: to me, that has the value of a ritual. I just enjoy every little moment of it, every small detail. I love getting my hands in the dough and molding it, I love the smell of raisins sunk in rum and the scent of freshly grated lemon and orange, and naturally, the smell of almonds which was all over the place and all over my clothes. It's just a very pure bliss. And I cover the dough and put it in a warm and dark place and put a blanket on top of it and I say a prayer that the cake will be good and I don't enter that room for two full hours. I just like doing this with piety, like a prayer, like a healing process. And when I put the cake in the oven I like staring at it for a while meditating about the reasons behind this act of love. To me, baking sweets is an act of love. I usually do it for those people who are special to me, friends, family or the most dear ones. This time too I split the dough in two: one for my parents, one lovingly made Stollen for my most dear one. And even if I would tell him about it he probably wouldn't accept it, but it's even more probable that I won't even dare to tell him about it, because he's not really a Christmas person. But that's ok. Even if I never give this Stollen to the one I made it for, that's ok. I needed to bake it. That's how I am. I am very selfish like that: although I try to accept the other one's freedom of not responding to my feelings, I always feel the need of expressing them even when facing rejection, sometimes, even at the cost of the other one's comfort. That's how I'm made, and it's a bit stupid. It's stupid baking a cake no one's going to eat, it's stupid believing "almost six impossible things every morning before breakfast", it's stupid preparing and anticipating a miracle that might never take place. And in the end it's bitter. It's very bitter to be alone, it's very bitter not to be able to talk to the one you love, it's bitter always being far away, it's bitter not knowing if it will ever get better. But through all this bitterness I pray every day for hope and love and faith. And every night when I go to bed I check myself to see if I still have hope. And that small fragile hope, that tiny tiny, so so tiny belief that this what I feel is right, that is just the right amount of sugar to this bitterness. And that, my dear ones, that's how marzipan is made. Because not everything that's bitter is bad, and sometimes bitterness can have a wonderful taste if you add to it a tender bit of sweetness. So my Stollen is about that. About accepting this bittersweet Christmas. About realizing that God loves me even though I'm foolish, and stupid and subjective, even though I exaggerate and I am very emotional. This Stollen is about me trying to let go and spend this Christmas in silence and peace, accepting that even though I am not "incandescently" happy, I am blessed and I am thankful. I am thankful for all the miraculous things that have happened this year, I am thankful for having such a beautiful soul to think about while baking a Stollen, I am thankful for loving. What's bittersweet about it is that I love in solitude. But that's ok, I would rather love from the distance than not love at all.
Oh, and P.S. this is my favorite bittersweet Christmas song :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8

Will You be upset if I skip Your birthday this year?

This year I didn't celebrate my birthday with a party. I was too busy and too stressed studying for the project that changed my life completely. I had lunch or dinner (can't remember) with my parents and that was it. And I really don't mind and I don't regret it at all. And so was 2 years ago and 4 years ago when I had an exam on my birthday. I'm just not obsessed about having a huge party or celebration.
But I do love Advent. And please note, Advent, not Christmas. And the Feast of the Three Kings on the 6th of January. I love that too.
I love Advent because it makes me believe a miracle will happen very soon. It makes me prepare and anticipate (and I loooooove anticipating!) and it makes me wait with excitement and hope and feel like happiness is just around the corner, just 4 weeks, then 3 weeks, then 2 weeks, one week, a couple of days... today... and it doesn't happen. I am sad, I am sorry, and as a christian I am ashamed to say, the last time I was completely happy on Christmas Day was 4 years ago in 2011, but then on the 27th of 2011 I started writing the most painful piece of prose I ever wrote. And since then, although I waited for it, although I prepared, although I made everything (not just silly decorations and sweets, I fasted, I prayed, I did "my job") and I was O.K. for Christmas, I wasn't truly happy. And no matter how much I tried to make it about Jesus and His birthday and His birth inside my heart, I still felt alone and sad.
So here I am, in the second week of Advent, on the night before waking up at 5 am to go to the Rorate mass, trying to picture how in the world will I be happy this Christmas, praying with all the strength I have left for a miracle, trying to figure out how the miracle will be (see the stupidity???) and in the end crying my eyes out that I just want to skip this Christmas.
Yes, my dearest Jesus, I want to skip Your birthday this year. I can't. I'm sorry. I can't celebrate your birthday alone again, I can't spend Christmas Day trying with all my guts to smile and to be happy and to make it about You when I know, and You know, and we both know, that I'll wish I was somewhere else. This year I don't care about decorations, I don't care about sweets and carols and presents and snow. I like those things, yes, but they don't matter anymore. They can't fill the void anymore. All I wish is that I wouldn't be alone, I don't need anything, I don't need one little led light, not even a candle, not the smallest one. I just don't want to be alone in my home looking at a Christmas tree that won't mean a thing. Instead I prefer an empty house, as dark as it can be, but knowing that I hold the hand of the man that I love in mine.
And this is very selfish, but it's the sincerest thing I've ever told You, my Beloved: I don't have enough faith to think You'll make me happy. And I don't want to celebrate Your birthday being sad, I just can't cry another Christmas through again. So can we skip Your birthday this year? I just don't think I can make it. I'm so so sorry and I do love You, but I don't want to come to another birthday of Yours alone.
Always Yours,
C.

The Lighthouse

I am the lighthouse.
I may seem far away and outside the trembling sea,
but my grounds are always firm and my light will never fade out.
No matter how strong the winds that shake you and how dark the storm,
no matter how violent the waves that toss you and how deep down you sink,
look at me.
I am always there and my light never gets tired and the sand never moves beneath my feet,
I am your lighthouse.
If you remember the night is always darker before the dawn,
the shore will be closer than you think. 

I wrote this a while ago when I was in Israel. And then I printed the picture of a lighthouse and put it on my coffee tumbler to remind me of it every day. And there are days when I feel I'm losing my faith and then I ask myself a set of questions and I answer them and they all sum up to this: "We are here to love: not much else matters" (Francis Chan). And there is another quote I think about every day: "Yes, feeling loved is very important. But loving, my precious girl, that's the necessity." We should never regret loving. Because that would be as if the lighthouse would regret being on the shore casting its light over the sea. Because yes, there are times when I feel sad if I don't feel loved the way I would like to be, and yes again, I feel alone every now and then. But even if all seems lost, I never regret loving and I know, with all that I am, that I do not wish to do otherwise. When I started writing this I was having a moment with God like one has with her only best friend, talking about all my fears and insecurities and how all feels hopeless. And I looked at my tumbler and wondered where does the lighthouse take its light from? I am given mine from God. All this fragile love I feel, all the poor strength I have, all of it, comes from Him. I can't pretend not to have a relationship with God, I can't avoid the subject and act as if all I feel is from myself. "We love because He loved us first."  If I want to keep being a lighthouse I need to be given my light. I need to feel loved, but by God. I need to talk to Him about the things I can't even spell out loud. I need to know Him by my side so that every day I can go on and on without ever feeling like I have nothing left to give. He's the first and He will always be first. Because all the good I have to give He gave it to me first. That's where the lighthouse takes its light from.

Since Advent started I felt the need to get back to this blog. I missed it :)