(Christmas essay)

I’ll tell you about usual Ukrainian families and their usual hustling and bustling getting ready for Christmas and the New Year holidays. On Christmas Eve as well as New Year`s Eve, everyone is worried, rushing around the shops, looking for gifts, fir-trees, bottles of Champagne, tangerines, chickens, ducks, turkeys, hand-made sparklers and dozens of other necessary and unnecessary things… Moms are always running around in circles being up to ears in their thoughts about the year ahead…Dads with baskets, full products, hard and soft drinks, barely have any time for it.

The families have a tradition of making New Year`s wishes when the clock strikes twelve. So when the clock chimes, we start clinking wine glasses and making toasts, communicating and singing, cracking jokes and entertaining together. If there is snow outdoors, then near the houses, we play snowballs. When topics for discussion disappear, we watch our favorite movies, remembering funny moments.

Here is a selection of my favorites I recommend watching during the long Christmas holidays:

• ‘Curly Sue’ a1991 American comedy film;
• ‘Home alone’ a1990 American family-comedy film;
• ‘How the Grinch stole Christmas’ a 2000 American fantasy comedy Christmas film;
• ‘Une Famille a louer’ a 2015 French-Belgian comedy film;
• ‘101 Dalmatians’ a 1996 American adventure comedy film;
• ‘Christmas present’ a 1986 Italian comedy-drama film;
• ‘Fred Klaus’ a 2007 American fantasy comedy film;
• ‘Love the Coopers’, a 2015 American Christmas comedy-drama film;
• ‘Charlie and the chocolate factory’ a 2005 American musical fantasy film.

So, you can watch, discuss and spend more time with your family!