Contrary to my belief in September, the coronavirus situation didn't get better, it might have even got worse since then in most of the countries in Europe: introducing Portugal to a curfew, England entering in tiers, Hungary closing its schools and Romania not even opening them, just to list a few. My parents would call me up every single day to ask about how would I get home for Christmas and slowly giving up hope, the plans turned into tears, realizing the high chance of me spending it in Portugal and instead having the traditional stuffed cabbage, just ordering some KFC and calling it a night.
Now as painful as it sounds, I was quite excited to spend my first Christmas away because I was curious about how it's like, I kind of associated this experience with "actually being an adult". I was hoping for a big celebration with all the friends I made, but it got a bit more difficult than that since even thou there was an extended curfew, the bars were closed so the only opportunity to meet other people was meeting them at their house and each home has its limitations. Well, the 24th wasn't a total train wreck, in the morning I exchanged presents with whom I bought one. In the afternoon, I had a videochat with my family, where they confessed they were all crying at the dinner table and they opened the Christmas gifts they got each other with a surprise for me too: they didn't want to wait any longer to get me my missing birthday and Christmas gift so they told me that they transferred me the rent money which basically is the best Christmas gift a student could ever get.
In the night after the tragedy of finding out the bars were closed, I still got the chance to spend the night with some dear friends, doing what any university students would do: playing games with some drinking. We were all dressed up for the occasion and my classmate even made some cute funky Christmas accessories that we could wear. The night didn't last long, we got used to the curfew and I couldn't be awake longer than 2 am so I needed to get some good sleep. The 25th was a little more sad. This was the time the loneliness kicked in, since the apartment was scary empty and as some of my friends would have a lovely Christmas lunch together, I just stayed in my bed the whole day, binge-watching Family Guy. While I'm glad I had this experience and I definitely learned from it, I realized that it doesn't matter how many times I say "this is a day just like any other and time is a social construct" at the end of the day there are special occasions meant to spend with your family. I think I will keep my promise I made this Christmas to my mother: I will never spend any Christmas away from my loved ones.