Patrícia de Oliveira and Andreia Filipa, 11ºA3

Time Capsule

(Different times and places, different categories of Christmas)

 

 

 

º Christmas, most common designation of a time when people show their cheerful side.

Place, Caracas, Venezuela. Time, forty years ago, 1960. Based on Maria de Fátima Marquêz Estevez:

 

Christmas time was a cheerful epoch in my life, me and my brother waited all year for a time when all family where together, enjoying, laughing, talking, changing gifts, although there weren’t too many. It was a different time, a different era. We, the children, had other types of mind, we didn’t care about valuable gifts, well we didn’t care about gifts at all. I remember, like it was yesterday, one Christmas my mom hadn’t money enough to spend on a gift for any of us, so she gave us a sweet and we got so happy just with it. I really miss that time, when money wasn’t the standard factor in society.

Back in the 60’s, Caracas city, Venezuela, we ran by the streets saying hello to every single person, wishing a cheerful Christmas, hugging everyone. We had food of our own, ,the typical food was: “allacas”, “empanadas de carne, de pescada y de camarón”, but even with all reservations we had to wait until mid night every Christmas to eat and open the few gifts we had.

 

 

º Xmas, most common designation to the day that so many people used to enjoy but now just can’t remember what it used to mean. We live in a consumer society, where children think that the real essence of this epoch is to receive everything they wished for.

Place, Aveiro, Portugal. Time, nowadays, 2000. Based on Emanuel Estevez de Oliveira:

Christmas is a day where we receive all the gifts we asked for, when we can spend all night playing and our parents just don’t argue about. A really awesome Christmas, to me, woulda be if I got for present a new computer and a top 1 account in the slen from Metin2 game. The dinner shoulda be a hamburger with fries and peach ice tea. It woulda be really spectacular if my sister just shut up and let me alone, so I woulda spend all night playing, eating what I want and just be in my own world. Oh man, that woulda be magnificent.

Commentary from the authors:

We wrote Xmas and all the words that look like been wrote by a teenager on propose to show up how is our society changed up.