It has been so many years since the day when I realized that I did not trust in God, I did not forbid a moment and question it. I got it right, but since we're here, let's take a look. Wait a second. And another. Nothing has changed. I do not believe in God. For Christmas, I get lively like never before and I want to briefly explain why.
Holiday Village - apparently called the lodges that are built around the tree in Scanderbeg Square - back to my favorite part of Tirana. I love Tirana in general and even, I'm one of the people who will not leave Albania (shocking, I know), but the square at the end of the year has another energy, a sort I can not find.
The lodges serve hot summer with cinnamon, apples and oranges, chestnuts, sweet-caramel and sometimes hazelnuts; sell festive decorations that I never buy because they are so expensive (!), but I see them with pleasure. Groups of friends gather together for laughs, kids are photographed at every corner of the square and in the background, a festive song. Without wanting to look like a desperate romantic, the Holiday Village is perfect. I reject arguments against.
By the end of the year, the whole city blinks from the lights, which naturally make everything seem at least tenfold more beautiful. In the night, Zogu Boulevard turns into a simple street, in a seemingly endless arcade shooter over the heads of those who pass underneath. Sado kitsch to be newly recycled lights in the city, keep their initial mission: to make you, and especially me, to feel festive.
Christmas music is a blessing on its own. I recommend the Besa Kokëdhima feast album and of course the powerful duo, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" and "Last Christmas." Although I have never experienced holidays as a typical Catholic, I feel the warmth they are supposed to follow, proximity to loved ones' family and giving gifts to make others happy.
The festive season begins midnight, fortunately, and an event that marks the atmosphere that awaits us is the Book Fair, an old tradition for me. Hundreds of people gather for a common love, buy books as gifts for themselves, and buy other books, which they preserve as gifts to relatives. Since I was little, I've been giving birth books for birthdays - which is always a few days after the Fair - and for the end of the year. I keep it close to my heart as an event precisely for this reason.
Finally, year-round firecrackers are really unorganized when compared to every possible state in the world, but also in their mess are effective - at least for me still looking at the child's eye. Changing the years is not an event, it is of no real importance, and of course we make sense. New beginnings, new goals, the same I do.
For the end of the year, and especially for the Christmas season, it seems to me that I can truly enjoy life, a sensation that extinguishes as soon as the first of January enters. Until then, find me nursing and looking for festive pajamas.
