I want to be in the holiday spirit. I used to be every year. What’s happening to me? Where’s my Xmas spirit, dammit?
I think the holidays and I started off on the wrong foot this year.
I love Halloween. But every store I walked into during October already had Christmas trees on display and Christmas music playing overhead. I could hear my inner voice grumbling, as I tried to block out the sensory overload surrounding me.
Once we passed into November I had forgiven Christmas for barging in and overtaking my autumn. But by then it was too late. I had done such a good job blocking it all out, that I barely noticed the holiday decorations around me everywhere I went.
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Christmas is so magical when you’re a kid. It’s all you think about once the whether turns cold. Great Christmas shows take the place of your usual tv programs during December, making it impossible not to get caught up in the excitement of anticipation.
My focus would be targeted in on Santa. What would I put on my wish list to him? Had I been good enough all year? Do we have enough cookies and milk to put out for him and all of his reindeer?
The only distraction would be the fun task of deciding what gifts I would get to surprise my parents and brother. It didn’t have to be big or expensive. Just thoughtful.
Going to bed Christmas Eve felt like an impossible feat. Just knowing that on the other side of sleep was that walk down the stairs to the view of presents underneath the tree….. ahhh, it made the butterflies feel like they would explode within me.
My brother and I waking up my parents so they could walk down with us, since we didn’t want to deprive them of that wondrous moment we would soon all be seeing for the first time together.
What was inside each wrapped box didn’t matter nearly as much as the pure joy it gave to us just because it finally came and they were there!
There is something about having a special moment to look forward to. The anticipation of hope. The excitement of seeing that wait turn into reality. It’s good for the soul.
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As you get older, its not that you choose to lessen that holiday glee. It just somehow gradually gets buried under all the stress of mundane chores, ever-growing real world responsibilities, and the distraction of concerns surrounding finances, careers, and inter-personal relationships.
The tricky thing is that when expectation doesn’t mesh with your current reality, your mind can start to do funny things with it all.
For me, it wasn’t that the stressors in my life these last few months had completely squashed what was once good inside me. But when we’re surrounded by constant sights and sounds telling us this is the most wonderful time of the year, even though this particular moment in time for us might be feeling far from wonderful, it starts to feel like something must be inherently wrong with us.
Worse yet, seeing other people decorate their houses, hearing other people sing along with holiday songs everywhere you go, and having radio, tv, and internet constantly assault us with what “should” make us feel merry, can sometimes make you feel worse than you already did.
Maybe you start to resent the situations that continue to kindle stress’s fire. Maybe your inner voice comes up with clever, albeit bitter, quips you wish you could say to people who look jolly. But it’s not really that you begrudge them their holiday joy, you just feel envious and miss the you that typically would have out-jollied the best of them.
We can start to feel like we can’t wait until it’s over. At least once it’s passed, the world around us will no longer force the mirror in front of us that reminds us of the gap between where we are, where we used to be, and where we want to be.
The truth is though, that once it passes, that holds it’s own disappointment. The loss of a holiday that we can never get back again. The lost chance to somehow recapture that magic of hope and the inner peace of knowing you have no regrets for how you focused your energy.
I told myself yesterday that if I was in my own holiday show right now, this would be the point where some unlikely being would show up and remind me of the true meaning of Christmas. Maybe he would come with three spirits to take me through the journey of my own life. Maybe she’d come with two helpers, one hot and one icy. Or maybe he’d be green, with a hairy chin, and a cute dog with a single antler.
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But maybe we don’t have to solve it all before the deadline of Christmas. And don’t even have to fix it with a fool-proof plan by New Years.
Maybe we can press “pause”.
Heck, all the things that stress us will still be there on December 27. (Let’s at least give ourselves one buffer day between jingling our bells and returning to “the real world”, right?)
Maybe we could allow ourselves a “cheat day” from stress.
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As I searched and searched around the house for my favorite homemade Xmas mixed CD (hey, I was a teenager of the 80’s), I started thinking it’s loss was somehow symbolic of my Christmas spirit.
It’s funny how things sometimes happen for a reason.
As my husband looked around for it in his work-space, since I was pretty sure the only place things could get lost in the house would be somewhere in “his cluttered side”, he called out to me to see what he had just found.
It was a recording of us, from the first Christmas we were married, singing and strumming Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. We both just listened quietly.
It sounded better than we had remembered it. Time has a way of helping us all see the bigger picture, rather than the mistakes we focus on when we’re in the moment.
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If we pay attention, we each may have a moment during the holiday season that gives us a reminder of our Christmas spirit. And if we’re open to the possibility, it could even help us reconnect to it.
Hey…. did my heart just grow three sizes this day?! 🙂