Holiday Blues

Even  though the holiday commercials evoke the best time of the year, the happiest time of the year, there are a number of us who find it quite challenging and struggle with depression. Depression could be because there is less sunshine and the days are shorter, dark nights are longer. There are those expectations we put on ourselves to find the perfect gift, the perfect party, bake those cookies and make the Yuletide gay for others along with keeping the house very tidy for company. Then there are stresses we take on from others to meet their expectations. Plus, trying to capture and incorporate the many family traditions which is compounded when two or more families are involved. Those commercials show happy people, all those toys, gadgets and jewelry, even those fancy cars, to buy to make someone else happy.  If you already have depression, imagine how much deeper the depression when those holiday bills arrive in your mailbox in January!

Those of us who have experienced abuse in our families have memories that carry through to today’s holidays. Considering how poor we were growing up, I can see that my parents did the best that they could. For as many Christmases I can recall, we had the usual. We would put up the tree and hung up our socks, full of anticipation. Each Christmas morning, in our socks, we would have an apple, orange, big peppermint stick, ribbon candy and some nuts. I think we would write up our Christmas lists. When I was 12, we went through the traditions with anticipation. On Christmas Eve that year, my mother brought out the presents sent by our grandma and said this is all we were getting this year. Do we want to open them now or wait until Christmas morning. I think we believed our mother was joking so we opened them. We each received quilted housecoats which was needed as our drafty old house was often chilly. Our father, an over-the-road truck driver, was not home that year for Christmas.

We got up the next morning, hopeful, to find there was nothing in our socks or under the tree. I felt crushed. No explanation was given and we did not talk about it either that I can recall. In later years, I wondered why my mother wouldn’t make the effort for something, some little things. Life rolled on to the next year and Christmas came around again. Presents were spilled out from under the tree to cover about a third of the living room floor space. I dubbed that year the guilty glut Christmas. As an adult, I wondered how much of the gifts were more about them than about us as what saw as a 13-year-old was a lot of stuff. Those two Christmases changed my view of the holidays. I saw that a lot of stuff does not fill me up inside. Having a lot of gifts to open is different than receiving gifts that reflect my wishes and needs and the thoughtfulness put into them.

After my son was born, I decided that I was going to do the holidays for him so he will have more pleasant memories even when I wanted to skip them. When he was four, he had been blessed with many people who got him presents. After the last box was ripped open, he looked at me and ask where were the rest of the presents.  That struck a very sore spot with me. The next year, I implemented the ten gift rule. He wrote down or cut out pictures for his Christmas list. I asked him choose ten gifts from varying prices that he truly wanted. The important lesson was to be more mindful of what truly is more meaningful. How often do we get things only to re-gift, get tossed in the toy box, not played with or broken, or become so bored and cast off. In our family today, we still use this as a guideline. I also decided we can sleep in instead of getting up at the crack of dawn. As I stayed in bed longer, I allowed my son to go through his stocking right away. We had breakfast then opened presents. We do the one-at-a-time so we can each ooh and aah. Because Christmas day was just us two, we would pick a movie and then had dinner when we came home. It was our special time.

Isn’t it interesting how impactful past events still shape our views and decisions about today. Doing for others gives me more joy. The holidays have become more of a spiritual experience for me. As painful as it was growing up, those two Christmases really changed my views about the holidays which I find was a positive one. It provided greater meaning for the holidays for me and added to my spiritual growth.