Posted by Alexander on his official Facebook-page, December 24th – 2014
I’ll be HOME for Christmas! (If only in my dreams..)
When I was younger, come December I was constantly on the search for that “Christmas Spirit”. I guess I was trying too hard with all those chocolate calendars and Christmas shows, because I was getting older each year and the spirit was not as easy to find as in previous years.
But no matter the mood, it all came down to Christmas Eve (today), and each and every year I found out that our traditions make the Christmas spirit. Because that spirit comes from inside. Yes, traditions, I don’t have many of those left. But each year we used to do the same things:
Igor, my father, played on a Christmas mass in town with his orchestra. My mother Natalia played the organ in one of many beautiful churches in Nesodden, and in the later years I joined her. And THAT was my christmas spirit: To share Christmas songs with other people! Whenever I played and looked at the audience, all I saw was smiles. Families, small children, old couples, everybody smiling. To me, to each other, and they were smiling to my music.
Later we would all come home. Mother would finish her amazing steak (we call it Juleribbe), while I went on my christmas walk with Cindy, our late dog (you can see her on the video). I had my hands full of presents, for all our neighbors. And they knew that we would come at exactly that time, so they were ready with presents for us and Cindy as well.
The evening finished with presents, dinner and a Christmas movie. My all time favorite is “The Muppet Christmas Carol”, the muppets are adorable and Michael Caine is the best Scrooge ever!
And speaking of presents: My father always made this game out of unpacking them. He actually always makes a list of all the presents, in three columns: Him, me and mom. He says it’s for remembering who to thank for what, later. But I know that initially he just wanted to show us that he gets the most presents, because of his many students. However, one year I took all my fan presents home with me, just to win over dad. That was a long night.
I’m still happy about presents. Someone spoke about me once: What do you give to him, he who can get everything? Well, you give me everything of course! But mostly it’s all about clothes, Blu-rays and video games. And if I get something cool to watch or play, I usually go to my friend Thomas’ house, which is just 15 minutes away from me, and together we test our new presents.
Anyhow, this year I’ll have to make it without all of this. I am now in Belarus, to work with my girl band Milki for the national ESC final in Minsk, which will be held on Friday. Since we are orthodox, we don’t celebrate Christmas here until the 7th of January. So this will be my first 24th December without a celebration.
I really didn’t look forward to this day, to break my greatest tradition. But after meeting with Milki, with stars in their eyes, looking forward to the final, I forgot about all my sorrows. And I remembered, once again, what gives me Christmas Spirit: I share my music with people I care about, and together we’re happy over our music. Of course we want to win the final, but we have also become a close family now, trying to do our best to make each other happy. And that’s what Christmas is all about, no matter where in the world you are: Making each other happy.
As for my mother and father: We cheated a little bit, and ate “Juleribbe” this monday when I was in Norway for one day. They told me how much they loved me, I nodded in return. And yes, it once again felt like Christmas.