Every year, I approach Christmas with expectations, and every year I’m disappointed.
Child-me wants the magic I knew growing up: helping my dad wind lights around the tree, wish lists, snow men, Grandma’s china, Jacob Marley, being a Toys R Us kid.
Grass-is-greener me imagines tastefully curated avant-garde décor, dinner parties, the perfect sweater/skirt combo, and wine-spritzed laughter at a candlelit table (what 90s magazine shoot did I crawl out of?).
Burned mac and cheese never shows up on these lists. Neither do short tempers, maxed out credit cards, or seeing loved ones crushed under the weight of terminal illness.
These images have no place in the perfect, bombastic, consumerist day of Red and Green. There’s no room for them in nostalgia or a perfectly-imagined someday.
If I make room for these, I’ll have to accept the opening of old wounds at family dinner and holiday hospital stays.
My ancestors observed the season by bringing evergreens into their houses, lighting candles and logs, believing that humans had some part to play in holding back the darkness of winter. But they’re long dead, and what the hell did they know?
My religion tells me this feast day is for (among other things) the filling up of joy, that it empowers the faithful to be lights in dark places.
These teachings confuse me. Where is the after-Christmas clearance candy in all of this?
I’m not some warrior against the darkness. I’m a doughy middle-age suburban woman who drowns handfuls of vegan marshmallows and peppermints in her oat milk hot chocolate, who is STILL GIFT SHOPPING two days before December 25, and who is terrified of death.
I just want things to be the way they were.
Or the way they should be.
But year after year, I get this jumble of joy, horror, stress, expectations, and meaning that demand far too much of me.
I want to live in a Christmas commercial full of happy, smiling faces, without sharp edges or the ticking clock of mortality.
Is that really too much to ask?
If you enjoyed this . . .
Sitting in silence
There’s no one more average than me. As long as I don’t speak, I get by unseen, especially in a crowd. I like it that way. Going to museums, restaurants, and movie theaters alone—that’s how I recharge. And in all my years of solitary outings, I’ve never once gotten a reaction. Of any kind, from anyone.
Photo by lil artsy https://www.pexels.com/@lilartsy/
I've always found Christmas to be ...weird. Months of buildup, and then the day after, it's all over like a deflated balloon, leaving everybody let down, exhausted and disoriented. But then, my day of celebration is Solstice, so what do I know? And by the way, are vegan marshmallows really a thing?
I hear you, Jennifer.