My overarching message around the holidays has always been this:
Do what you need to do to protect yourself when your emotions are still raw. Back out of the holidays all together, if that’s what feels right. Create new traditions that suit who you are now. And most of all, hang in there, because it does get easier, and eventually you’ll find a way to make the holidays joyful again.
But, this year, I want to make an amendment. Because, the truth is, for some of you, the holidays might keep sucking for a long, long time, and my being all Pollyanna about it, isn’t going to change that.
For years, I have followed my own guidelines for holiday survival. After a couple of years of trying to force the Christmas spirit, we chose to opt out of Christmas because it was too sad. Then, for a number of years, we made a point of going away and doing something totally non-traditional. It wasn’t “Christmas” as I’d envisioned it, but it felt right for us, and we enjoyed the season again.
I thought I had a different attitude about Christmas this year. Mr. Fab and I are staying at home, just the two of us, and keeping it low key. We put up a tree and decorated the house. I even wrote about how special that was in a post on my author site. We’ll keep up our new tradition of celebrating on Christmas Eve and it will be a “nice” Christmas, not perfect, but good enough.
Over the past week, I’ve talked to several friends, fellow bloggers who, like me, are several years into being at peace with not having children. They each talked about plans for a quiet celebration, of an adapted holiday experience. And each of them also added that some part of their plans had triggered the old sadness or poked at a tender spot. Not one of us gushed about the jingly joyful celebration we were planning. Instead, we talk of an “almost-but-not-quite” Christmas.
As I was rooting around in my mind, trying to find a point to this post, I suddenly thought about my dad. My dad hated Valentine’s Day, not because of the commercial tackiness, but because his own father had died on February 14th. Even two decades later, he couldn’t find joy in the day, and none of us expected him to. I tiptoed around him and, by February 15th, he was his old self again. As a young girl, hoping to get Valentines in the mail, I couldn’t understand why my dad felt this way. But, of course, I understand it fully now.
I stand by all my guidelines about the holidays: It does get easier. You will find a way to get through the holidays and even enjoy them again. But, odds are, they will always tap a sore spot and serve as a reminder of what’s missing. It might always be “almost-but-not-quite” Christmas.
But, before you know it, it will be January again, a new year and a fresh chance to live the life you do have to its fullest. I don’t know about you, but the New Year is fast becoming my favorite holiday of all.
I thoroughly agree with this post. I’m not sure what it’s like in the UK or US, but I find that by Christmas night, I have the thank-goodness-that’s-over-for-another-year feeling, and by the next morning, I’m fine again. So I think that even while we might have our sore spots and ouch moments, the period when that happens gets shorter and shorter, and recovery gets easier and easier. That’s what I’m hoping for this year anyway!
Roll on Boxing Day.
I’m hoping it gets easier and easier. We are celebrating Christmas with inlaws on new years eve though so I have two hurdles to cross, Christmas and new years. I can not wait for January 2nd when I can finally breath again.
Christmas is the worse, but then there’s Mother’s Day, graduation day, summer vacatio, Father’s Day, etc….. I hate to be a downer but it seems like it is never ending. Sometimes I wish I could just live on a remote island where there are no ‘holidays’, where I could just live in emotional peace.
I struggle at this time of year. We are bound by two widowed mothers who need company at Christmas and who my husband and I would not feel able to ‘leave’ alone. The smallness of our family and the elderly nature of our group serves to remind me of the lack of youngsters, who bring joy and optimism. I deal with this as best I can, but find the fact that my friends with their families and endless activities to attend have very little time to ‘fit you in’ exacerbates the hole that I so wanted to be filled with my own family. I am adapting to my family of ‘two’, but can’t see a time when I am glad that I didn’t have children. The world feels lonely for those who have very little family and I don’t like the look of the future, where I have even less and feel excluded from so many things especially at this time of year.
I understand exactly what you write about. Christmas (and life, too) for us is centred around 2 widowed mothers for whom we care and cater for. It does so often feel that you are the only ones in this situation and I can identify with the sense of loneliness and isolation that shimmers below the surface. Please know that you are not alone in this – when I feel that overwhelming sense of sadness, I think of others, unknown to me, who must be in the same situation and pray some kind of strength to help us all to keep moving onwards as best we can.
My husband and I don’t celebrate major holidays, including Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t miss it at all. We just enjoy our time together and being off work, without the pressure and stress of cooking, shlepping to families’ houses, buying gifts, decorating, etc.. People are always shocked and give me dirty looks when I say I hate the holidays, but to me it’s all overrated and commercialized. I breathe a sigh of relief when it’s all over and done with.
I agree with the comment “thank goodness that’s over for another year” and I also would like to be on a remote tropical island right now far from this craziness and if our budget allowe, we would do just that every year at this time.