We all have different ways to cope in the many phases we go through not only now, but in any situation. At the moment, we try to find a new normal every day. Some days seem almost surreal, and at times we just wish that the day will be over, other days we wish that certain moments would last longer.

A dear friend shared a picture on facebook, which said that during these times, the days of the week all seem the same. It feels like there is no Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc. but only a yesterday, today and tomorrow. Days are very similar, yes, and although we still have meetings and appointments and are aware that the days in the week differ in names and schedules (to some extent), they feel the same because it all happens from the same place: home. At least for some of us.

We are fortunate that this time of isolation gets somehow interrupted by Easter. The Guardian published an article where they ask readers to share how they are celebrating Easter in lockdown, and you can read other newspapers in the Netherlands , Germany, Switzerland, UK etc. In Italy, they indicate where people can follow the messa di Pasqua online.
On TV there are commercials talking about this Easter being different because families can’t meet in person.

Our children seem to need more than ever a sign of hope and normalcy, and Easter is one of the moments in the year that gives us hope every single year.

This year we won’t celebrate it, like planned, in Italy and Switzerland, we’ll celebrate it at home instead. We will decorate our home, have a long skype session on Sunday with our family in Germany and Switzerland, and enjoy the time with each other here. It’s not the first time that we spend Easter without our extended family. For internationals and expats this is nothing new. But still: knowing that you can’t even if you would like to, is what makes a huge difference. The freedom to decide yourself is taken from us this year, and maybe this is why we long for it even more.

We try to keep our minds busy by binge-reading, writing a lot (like I just did in the past days…), and binge-watching Netflix series. Celebrating Easter is becomes a new meaning this year because we long for a new beginning, we long for this all being over soon in the best possible way for our dear ones and for us.

Some parents might think that teenagers don’t really like to celebrate Easter. In Italy there is a saying “Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi” (“Christmas with your family, Easter with whoever you want (=usually it means friends)”), but this year is different.

All celebrations become more important right now because we are more aware of what it means to celebrate in a more isolated way. Our children miss their friends and family even more… Easter invites to contemplation and there is a positive side of it in celebrating in a more calm and personal way: “In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft” (= the strength is to be found in serenity).

I wish you and your family and friends a healthy Easter, no matter if you celebrate it with your core family, with your partner only (because your children live abroad) or if you are alone this year: bake or cook something delicious, enjoy nature if you can, listen to some good music and enjoy the colors of this season.

Here is a little virtual tour to the Keukenhof here in the Netherlands.

We will watch Andrea Bocelli on Easter Sunday, and his Music for Hope live streaming from the Duomo di Milano – would you like to join us in a virtual way?

How are you celebrating Easter this year?

#wereallinthistogether #stayhomestaysafe

The poem I would like to share in this post is about the time of advent and St. Nicholas.

Ödipussi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is written and performed by the German comedian, humorist, cartoonist, film director, actor and writer Vicco von Bülow (1923-2011) alias Loriot. He is best known for his cartoons, the sketches from his 1976 television series Loriot, alongside Evelyn Hamann, and his two movies, Ödipussi (1988) and Pappa Ante Portas (1991).

In six episodes of Loriot, he presented sketches, usually being the protagonist himself, and short cartoons, drawn by himself.

Loriot’s humour focussed on the peculiarities of German people including the awkwardness of everyday situations and miscommunication in human interaction.

“What I am interested in most of all are people whose communication fails. All that I consider comical results from crumbled communication, from talk at cross purposes.” (Loriot)

His cartoons hinged on the contrast between the presented situation, the dignity displayed by his typically big nosed characters and the picture’s caption. Inevitably one of these elements gets out of line, for example, when he combines the caption “We demand equal treatment of men and women, even if the suckling baby might temporarily lose weight.” with the picture of a bulbous-nosed man breast-feeding a baby in a distinguished manner. The topics of his cartoons were mainly drawn from everyday life, scenes of the family and middle-class society. (wikipedia)

This contrast between absurd an situation and dignified behaviour are very characteristic for his sketches and films. Loriot was incredibly popular. The accuracy of his language and the “high-brow sense of comedy led to the adoption of a large number of phrases and inventions from the series’ sketches into German common knowledge and everyday speech.” There is the “yodel diploma”, the “stone louse” and sentences like “With that, you have somehing on your own!”, “Please, don’t talk right now…”, “There used to be more tinsel”, “Look, a piano! A piano, a piano!” or the laconic “Ach!?” (“Oh, is it?”…).

In this macabre poem entitled Advent (1973), Loriot lent Knecht Ruprecht its diabolic-sinister context from which he originated.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1SwcR5Vwis&w=560&h=315]

ADVENT

Es blaut die Nacht, die Sternlein blinken,      / The night turns blue, the stars are twinkling

Schneefloecklein leis herniedersinken.      / snowflakes quietly are sinking.

Auf Edeltaennleins gruenem Wipfel     / The fire tree tops are beaming green

haeuft sich ein kleiner weisser Zipfel. / and little snow heaps can be seen.

Und dort vom Fenster her durchbricht / There! From a window  rather bright

den dunklen Tann ein warmes Licht.   / through the trees there goes a light.

Im Forsthaus kniet bei Kerzenschimmer / Lit by candles, woodman’s hut

die Foersterin im Herrenzimmer. / the woodman’s wife sits on her butt (in the woodman’s study).

In dieser wunderschoenen Nacht  / Just in this silent winter time

hat sie den Foerster umgebracht.  / has she committed murder crime

Er war ihr bei des Heimes Pflege / and killed the woodman in great haste

seit langer Zeit schon im Wege.   / she thought of him as rather waste.

So kam sie mit sich ueberein:   / Thus was the plan. At Nichlas Eve

am Niklasabend muss es sein. / poor wasteful woodman had to leave

Und als das Rehlein ging zur Ruh’, / when deer was from the forest creeping

das Haeslein tat die Augen zu,  / the little rabbit started sleeping

erlegte sie direkt von vorn  / a rifle took the woodman’s wife

den Gatten ueber Kimme und Korn. / and took away her husbands life.

Vom Knall geweckt ruempft nur der Hase / The bang annoyed the rabbit’s sleep

zwei-, drei-, viermal die Schnuppernase  / for just a minute, when he was deep

und ruhet weiter suess im Dunkeln, / and in the forest, thinking

derweil die Sternlein traulich funkeln.  / while high above the stars were twinkling.

Und in der guten Stube drinnen / And in the woodman’s snuggery

da laeuft des Foersters Blut von hinnen. / his blood escapes the artery.

Nun muss die Foersterin sich eilen, / The woodman’s wife must quickly act

den Gatten sauber zu zerteilen. / and cuts the woodman – that’s a fact

Schnell hat sie ihn bis auf die Knochen / as custom is for woodmans doing

nach Waidmanns Sitte aufgebrochen. / she skins her husband without woeing.

Voll Sorgfalt legt sie Glied auf Glied / With care she places all the pieces

(was der Gemahl bisher vermied)-, / and keeps a filet for her nieces

behaelt ein Teil Filet zurueck / as festive roast, a tender part

als festtaegliches Bratenstueck / she thinks that this is really smart.

und packt zum Schluss, es geht auf vier / The rest she wraps like Christmas gifts

die Reste in Geschenkpapier. / and thinks of them as precious thrifts.

Da toent’s von fern wie Silberschellen, / Hark! Silver-bells are ringing sweetly

im Dorfe hoert man Hunde bellen. / a dog is barking rather neatly.

Wer ist’s, der in so tiefer Nacht / Who might it be, so late at night,

im Schnee noch seine Runden macht ? / to walk in snow and without light?

Knecht Ruprecht kommt mit goldenem Schlitten / The helper of Santa Claus (Ruprecht) is riding

auf einem Hirsch herangeritten ! / on a stag, and law-abiding,

“He, gute Frau, habt ihr noch Sachen, / he asks the woodman’s wife for presents

die armen Menschen Freude machen ?” / to kids and to the poorer peasants.

Des Foersters Haus ist tief verschneit, / The woodman’s hut lays in the snow

doch seine Frau steht schon bereit: / but woodman’s wife – she isn’t slow:

“Die sechs Pakete, heil’ger Mann, / “Good man, all that I have is gathered here.

‘s ist alles, was ich geben kann.”  / Six wrappings, to the peasants’ peer.”

Die Silberschellen klingen leise, / The bells are ringing, nice and pure

Knecht Ruprecht macht sich auf die Reise. / Santa’s helper makes his tour

Im Foerstershaus die Kerze brennt, / a candle in the woodman’s vent

ein Sternlein blinkt – es ist Advent. / is shining there – it is Advent.

(LORIOTs HEILE WELT, Diogenes)

translation into English from © Mathias and tastyarts

Related articles

• St Nicholas and his helpers Knecht Ruprecht, Krampus, Père Fouettard and Zwarte Piet (expatsincebirth.com)

Every person that has spent some time abroad has probably made this experience. It can either be during a vacation or during a long(er) stay in another country.

Someone just says something judgmental about our culture, our nationality, the way we look or dress, the way we speak or the way we do things, and we feel obliged to defend it. It doesn’t even have to be our own culture, it can also be a culture we’re familiar with, that we adopted or we simply embraced for whatever reason.

These observations are often done by people who are not aware of hurting our feelings but still, how can we deal with this and react – or not react – to this kind of small attacks to what we consider “ours” ?

We may feel protective as if they attacked or judged us, our children, our way of life or something we really care about.

I personally react differently to these comments when I am alone than when I am with my children and family. When I am alone, I tend to not take it personally and ignore the comments: if the person is not a friend, colleague or anyone that I have to live or work with, it’s easy to forget the incident.

If the person is someone I have to deal with on a regular basis, depending on the comment, I would reduce contacts with her or him to a minimum, for the simple reason that I don’t want to have to deal with people who are not flexible and understanding every day.

Before starting to explore why the person makes these comments I would try to find out if she is flexible enough to accept other perspectives or not. If not, there is no argument that will make her consider other points of view. It would be a waste of time and energy to try to make her understand (see my strategy n.5 here below). As an intercultural communication trainer I know how much people who express their bias can ruin a conversation and a relationship.

If my children, family or friends are involved, and are in any way affected by the comments, usually speak up and try to understand what makes the person say what she said, no matter if she is judging one of my cultures or any another one.

Here are the 4 ways I react to negative comments about culture (and anything else):

1) First of all I ask the person to repeat what she just said. In most of the cases judgmental comments are spontaneous and when they have to be repeated they lose their initial harshness.

2) I reformulate with my own words what the person just said like “so, what you’re saying is that…”. By reformulating what the other person said, we give her the opportunity to correct the wording and change perspective. Maybe she chose an unfortunate formulation and didn’t intend to be judgmental. – If her intention was to be judgmental, we can decide to whether explore the issue further (if we want) or simply acknowledge that we have different point of views.

3) I ask the person to explain what makes her say that– without pointing out that I perceived it as negative. Maybe she isn’t aware that her comment could be interpreted as negative, or she had a negative experience which lead her to making that comment. – Again, it’s up to us to decide how and if we want to discuss this.

4) Ignore it. This is the wisest way to deal with this. By not taking the comment into consideration, we can avoid any kind of discussion about it. Especially if we think that any kind of reasonable discussion with this person is a waste of time. – I follow the Bavarian way of “nedemal ignoriern”, but in a friendly way, after all, it is never good to add fuel to the fire.

Most of the time, people who make negative comments about another culture (or person) are very insecure and not content. They are probably struggling with accepting the difference and the “otherness” of the situation, the way things are done, or look like.

If their negative comment is the expression of their surprise or them being uncomfortable, we can help them make sense of the different situation or habit, by bridging between something they know and the “new” and “unusual” one, and by explaining them why things are said, done in another way etc.

If their negative comment is a way for them to signalize that they are offended, we can reassure them that they don’t need to like the “other”, and that they are allowed to have their own opinion. But if they are offending us or our dear ones, we want to make this clear to them in a friendly tone.

The most important aspect of dealing with negative comments in any situation is to take a step back, not take it personally, draw a very clear line.

How do you deal with negative comments? Please let me know here below

We are living in an international community with a great amount of parents from the UK, Australia and the US, and among our friends, the question whether to send a child to a boarding school or not comes up regularly.

I am the kind of mother that couldn’t imagine being separated from my children, not until they’re 18 or whenever they are ready to go. Yes, I’m a “mamma italiana” type of mother, or a “Glucke” how it’s called in German: I like having my children around me. I love being a mother and I am very grateful to have the opportunity to spend plenty of time with my children, I want them in my life and want to take part of their daily life.

This is why it was very difficult for me to accept and understand how a parent could send a child under 18 to a boarding school. Especially because it means, in our situation, to send him or her to a school that is in another country, hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of kilometers away.

Sending children to boarding schools is more common in some societies than in others and some of my British friends started talking about sending their children to boarding school when they were still quite young.

I couldn’t understand how a mother of a 5 year old could already make plans to send her son to a boarding school at age 8 or 10. They were making plans on trips they would “finally do” with their husbands/partners when their children would be “away”. It sounded like the children were a nuisance. It took me quite some time to understand their point of view, their world view and look at it all from another perspective. – I still struggle with this mentality, but I understand where it comes from.

The UK has a rich history of boarding schools which reflects in one of the most read books in the past years, Harry Potter. Children from around the world read about life in a surreal boarding school, far away from home, without parents being active part of their daily lives, and they accompany these fictive characters for several years through adventures, sad and happy moments. I read Hanni und Nanni (aka St. Clairs) by Enid Blyton, when I was 10 and wondered sometimes how it would be to grow up in a boarding school. It seemed like a very exotic way to live to me. – But reading books about the life of fictive characters in that situation and living it yourself are two very different animals…

Boarding schools in Britain started in medieval times “when boys were sent to be educated at a monastery or noble household, where a lone literate cleric could be found”, but the institution has adapted itself to changing social circumstances over 1000 years. During the colonial expansion of the British Empire, they became highly popular as they ensured education to children of British colonial administrators.

“in some societies children enter at an earlier age than in others. In some societies, a tradition has developed in which families send their children to the same boarding school for generations. One observation that appears to apply globally is that a significantly larger number of boys than girls attend boarding school and for a longer span of time. The practice of sending children, particularly boys, to other families or to schools so that they could learn together is of very long standing, recorded in classical literature and in UK records going back over 1,000 years. ” (more information here)

If for some local families, sending their children to a boarding school means to help them develop wider horizons than their family can provide, families who spend many years living abroad, boarding schools represent the often unique opportunity for their children to get in touch with their heritage culture, its values, customs and beliefs during their childhood years.

Knowing about the historical background of sending children to boarding schools helped me to be more understanding.

When I saw this video some time ago, I started questioning the reasons that brought the parents to send their children to a boarding school.

I understand that if a parent grew up like this and saw the benefits of it, he probably wants his children make the same experience. Many parents don’t question the way they were brought up and assume that what was good for them is automatically beneficial for their children too.

I personally wonder if this option is not a way to escape parenthood at an earlier stage, a kind of handing over a child to someone else – like it’s said in this video by one of the educators.

I have several friends who have sent their children to boarding schools and I see them suffer, I see them keeping up the “brave facade” that I see back in the video here above. They don’t meet with others when they are sad and lonely, and when they feel some tears coming up when among friends, they say they’re “being silly”.

Sometimes they share their grief, the grief of a premature empty nest, the grief of not seeing their children grow up, become teenagers and young adults, the grief of not really being part of their childrens’ life. They are the bereaved. And there is the fear that their children may not want to come back and visit in the future, that they will resent their decisions. They are lonely and abandoned.

I understand that for many internationals who move frequently, a boarding school gives some continuity their children usually miss, but I can’t but wonder: why would they choose a life far away from their children, a life that tears their family apart? Isn’t it one of the reasons we have children, to raise them ourselves, and not to let this part to someone else, some stranger?

I have seen children suffering because of frequent moves. I have seen these children being sent to boarding school because of their suffering. I honestly doubt that being separated from their parents, who usually are the pillar and only constance in their young life, is the best and healthiest solution.

I could go on and on writing about this topic but I leave it here, open… for everyone who reads this continue the discussion in the comments.

I surely am not here to judge.

Like one of the mothers says at the end of the video: I wonder what the long term effect is on children who are growing up like this. When children are separated from their parents it always has an effect on everyone involved, and there is not one right solution that fits all.

Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs there are, because it involves emotions, requires tough decisions, and leaves us with many doubts, uncertainties that affect us because they involve people we love.

Ruth van Reken wrote a very important book about her own experience at boarding schools. Letters never sent is a collection of letters she never sent to her mother, where she shares her thoughts, experiences, her sad moments, her worries.

I can also recommend Unrooted Childhoods,a collection of stories from adults who grew up abroad.

What is your opinion or experience with sending children to boarding school? Please share it in the comments here below.

The more choice we have, the more miserable we become. What Nobel economics laureate Herbert Simon defined with satisficing (a combination of satisfying and suffice) is the decision making strategy or cognitive heuristic that entails searching through the available alternatives until an acceptability threshold is met (Colman, Andrew (2006). A Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 670).

What about all the things that “come for free”? What is offered for free or to a reduced price? Especially on days like Black Friday, people think they need to take advantage of the many bargains… only to find themselves with stuff they didn’t really need or want.

Ending is not better than mending. What Aldous Huxley already imagined in his 1932’s Brave New World has been realized. Repairing has become more expensive than replacing, and we “buy new stuff to conceal from ourselves our disappointment about the failings of the old stuff” (The 10 lies about Black Friday’s consumerist circle of hell). – Keeping things as long as we can, updating them or consciously choosing not to upgrade our phone, and repairing them as long as we can is the new black. – Find a repair café in your area (here is a site for repair cafés in the Netherlands)

Sustainable consumerism means to ask ourselves what we really need.

Like Marcel Proust said: le désir fleurit, la possession flétrit toutes choses, i.e. desire makes everything blossom, possession makes everything wither and fade.

People tend to buy because they think (or hope!) that the item or the act of buying itself will make them happy – even if only for a short time.

“Strong materialist values are associated with a pervasive undermining of people’s wellbeing, from low life satisfaction and happiness to depression and anxiety, to physical problems such as anxiety, and to personality disorders, narcissism, and antisocial behaviour,” wrote psychologist Tim Kasser in The High Price of Materialism.

I don’t mean that one should avoid any kind of possession. That isn’t possible, even if we reduce our wardrobe into a capsule wardrobe, declutter our home because we actually only need 20% of all we have, and move into tiny houses. But we can all be more conscious about the way we gift, which will not only make us more content, but will also contribute to being more considerate towards our planet, our society, community, our family and friends, and ourselves.

The conscious way of gifting

My hierarchy of conscious gifting is inspired by Abraham Maslows’ Hierarchy of needs.

A more conscious way of gifting can be to give memories and time, instead of items. Time has become very precious and the attention and connection that comes with it is what many of us long for, what we all need even more in an era of constant distractions… The idea is to offer our time and attention to others, to listen and connect with them. By doing so, we also build memories as the other person will remember the time spent together. It may cost something, for example if we gift someone a visit at the spa, a riding lesson, an abonnement at the gym etc..
We can also upcylce items by giving them another purpose, transforming them in a way that they can be useful for us or others.

We can make something from scratch that makes the other person happy, or buy second hand.

Finally, whenever we buy something new, we can be more conscious of what and where we buy it:

• Is it supporting the right businesses?
• Is it produced in a sustainable way?
• Are those who produced it been fairly treated?
• What is its ecological footprint?

What do you do to be more conscious in gifting?

How do you approach this topic with your children and family?

Please share your thoughts in the comments here below – Thank you, Ute