Christmas Eve used to start with a coat on the chair, a party in the kitchen and an impossible conversation about whether the sea bream was dry. Now it starts with a poorly served drink at six in the afternoon and a blurry photo that says Good Afternoon. … Christmas has become thinner. The layers have been deleted. First he lost his religious sense, then his solemnity, then his family and now he is losing his modesty. The Tardebuena is not a rebellion or a new tradition: it is an early escape. An elegant way to achieve nothing by wanting to do everything.
Young people – this word we use as if it were a species – go out drinking before family dinner to cope better or, in some cases, to never get there. At seven o’clock, they are already late. At eight o’clock, they are already tired. When they were nine years old, they had a fight with someone they loved very much and they couldn’t remember why. At ten o’clock, they uploaded a story with a Christmas carol in the background and an Instagram story with the icon crying with laughter.
Christmas afternoon celebrates nothing. This does not commemorate. He doesn’t remember it. It’s a drunken break from childhood and hangovers. A toast for no particular reason other than not being home when the awkward questions start. Before, we drank it later. After eating, after dinner, after an argument. Now you drink first. Before the arrival of the brother-in-law. Before anyone asks “and how are you?” Before the night takes shape. The bars know this. They learned to decorate with garlands without commitment. They don’t put out crèches, they put out “playlists”. They don’t offer heat, they offer large glasses. Everything is temporary, like no one wants to stay too long, but no one knows where to go.
Christmas afternoon is something of an early farewell. They toast for things that didn’t happen and for things that won’t happen. Nobody sings. Nobody really dances. We talk about plans for later that never come true. A different Christmas is promised, one that will look a lot like this one. Ultimately, it’s not the young people’s fault. Traditions, like old furniture, fall apart when no one sits on them. And Christmas limped along for years, supported by custom, emotional blackmail and this almost titanic effort by the president not to say Christmas, as if the foam was coming out of saying it.
The difference is that before, it was pretend. Now, not even that. We go out for a drink because it’s easier than facing the silence of the living room, the artificial tree, a nostalgia that we don’t know where it comes from. Christmas afternoon does not replace Christmas Eve: it avoids it. Maybe in a few years someone will say that it was a tradition too. That there were full bars, lights on during the day and young people drinking glasses without really knowing why. He will lie a little, as we always lie about the past.
Christmas is not dead. He only left the house before. And like almost everyone who leaves early, we don’t know if he’ll come back.
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