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About Christmas as such I do not have any reservations. There’s only one negative thought I connect with Christmas and this is the burial of my grandfather, nine years ago shortly before the Christmas of 1996. He had died very suddenly of a condition later described as heart insufficiency (I don’t know if that’s the correct term in English). His funeral was very sombre. It was a cold dreary December day. The priest, who had visited us at home, was very friendly. I had prepared a little piece about my grandfather but wasn’t sure if I would be able to say something that day. She said she’d give me a sign when it would be time for me to speak and then I could see if I would feel up to it. Of course I didn’t. Being sentimental by nature I nearly drowned in my own tears…

This is the connection to the present Christmas time. Again I am flooding the house in tears, the reason being that this year’s Christmas is heavily overshadowed by the possibility that my girlfriend might go back to Greece. She is finishing her studies in February next year and that would be the point to go back to the country that she has left almost two years ago to be with me.

Her parents, who do not know that she is gay and together with me (the just know and like me as her best friend) exercise an almost inhumane pressure upon her. They are just presupposing that after her studies she will go back to stay. One of her sisters, who know about us, doesn’t even stop at emotional blackmail, blaming her father’s occasional heart irregularities on her absence and the prospect of her staying abroad (not from from his heavy agricultural work, the work in the family hotel and the high activity in local politics that keeps him running and considerably stressed all day). Seriously: Anyone here ever killed a close relation by coming out to him or her?

I have the impression that when a child is born in Greece the do not care to cut the umbelical cord. And in the course of the next few years they weave a couple of additional cords tying the individual to the family. Those are crossed and knotted purlwise like the intricate pattern of a Victorian lace scarf. And of course nobody really wants to be the fallen slip who destroys the whole pattern. That’s only for the anarchists – can anyone name a famous Greek anarchist whose fame has travelled beyond the limits of his country?

We are together for almost four years. Two in long distance (she: Greece, me: Germany) and almost two we live together in Germany. My family knows her and they love her as what she is: my partner. My grandmother recently told her to call her and grandad by their first names, with my parents this happened over one year ago. I think also her parents should have a chance to understand why she doesn’t really want to go back. They should have a chance to understand why the adorable best friend of their daughter suddenly doesn’t want to speak with them anymore in her funny Greek and slams doors. They should have a chance.