Well, All the Christmas Cheer is Gone for Good...

Image via Wikipedia

I was kinda OK today, with all the Christmas gloom that hovers above me during this season...I was kinda OK before Christmas because I simply refused to let myself get carried away by depression and sadness. It happens to me every year around the major holidays...it passes afterwards but it usually leaves me with a bitter taste for months. But today, it was different...I even planned a nice optimistic blog post about how I decided not to let negative thoughts pervade my coat of happiness. The truth is we had a nice Christmassy week-end. Maya's godparents came to dinner, I went overboard with the decorations this year, so the apartment was nice and cosy, with lots of lights and candles...
But, and I really don't know why, maybe it is my sadistic alter ego, I went and read a blog post that simply made me sad...about how nice it is in Israel without Christmas...well, I guess it is the person's right to be happy for herself and for the lack of Christmas (strangely enough, we are on the land where Jesus was born, remember?) but she does forget that here in Israel live a lot of people (and not just Russians, as she implies in her post) that are different and that different doesn't necessary mean something bad...It is after all a free country...
For some time now I've been suspecting the lady of being a bit extremist in her views about Israel and the relationship between people here. I remember that once she wrote a post about stereotypes in Israel and she was simply mean towards certain groups (she has something against Russians, it is clear). Back then I said to myself that I won't be reading her blog anymore...
I know now I was very naive when I decided to come and live here. I thought that Israel is what I saw when I worked as a journalist and wrote articles that praised the Jewish state that I grew to love...But life is just more complicated than that and time taught me how gulible I was...It is not enough that I have to deal with my rootless existence, I have to put up with all kinds of narrow-minded people that make me feel like a criminal...I have friends, Christian friends that are afraid to decorate a Christmas tree because of "what will the neighbours say" and because they don't want their kids to be perceived as different. I sometimes ask myself waht will I tell my daughter when she'll be older...
Well, so all my good disposition when to the dogs...and I am hurting again...I feel trapped sometimes, trapped because of prejudice and ignorance, and I feel so bad because I know I cannot change anything...