I love the lights, I love the music, I love the snow, and I love the spirit.
They’re nice. I’ll give you that.
But underneath the fluff and the flurries and the “fa-la-la’s,” there are some things about Thanksgiving and Christmas that just make me anxious.
I’m one of many, many Americans who have come to dread the holiday season.
Bah. Humbug.
While everyone’s leaping for joy at the sound of Michael Bublé’s voice and the sight of frost on the ground, I’m beginning to feel a bit outcast. I just can’t seem to match that enthusiasm anymore.
I’ve been wrestling with anorexia for almost half of my life, so Thanksgiving has never really been my jam. Too much food. Too many choices. Overstimulation and stress and guilt find me by the plateful every single November.
Christmas, now, is not much better. My father is terminally ill, and the traditions that I used to love just don’t feel the same anymore. The emphasis on “family” and “love” and, truth be told, “faith,” in a time where all of the above have sort of crumbled at my feet, genuinely stings. I can’t ever be sure which Christmas morning will be our last together. It’s a cloud that hangs low over the animated vibrancy of the festivities and one that left me crying at the end of the day last year.
I don’t mean to be a Scrooge, a Grinch, a damper.
This entire season just makes me sad.
There are broken families all across the country, ones damaged by divorce and abuse and illness and death. There are eating disorders by the millions, not to mention all of the other mental illnesses that cause their sufferers to miss out on the holiday cheer. There are people who have to work overtime to pay for all of the gifts and others who can’t afford to meet those societal expectations at all. There are people eating all alone. There are people who don’t have the money to eat at all. There are empty living rooms without a tree, empty tables without a turkey, empty hearts, empty eyes, lingering all around you.
There are issues that candlelight and “Silent Night” simply cannot fix.
I wish that at eight years old, when my perception of the holidays was still raw magic and unfiltered dazzle, that someone had told me to take a step out of my warm, full kitchen, away from the lights that shimmered in illusion on my eaves, away from the presents littering my floor, away from the arms that never ceased embracing me, away from this perfect fairytale story that I got to live because of luck.
I know that it would have made me all the more grateful for what I had.
I think most people, in this season of love and giving, have a superficial understanding of thanks. It’s one thing to know you’ve been blessed and another to know exactly how much.
I know, even in the midst of my personal chaos, how fortunate I am to have love. To have food. To have warmth. To have money. To have life.
This holiday season, I want to amplify the things that I still have over the things that I have lost.
I still feel a little more cheerful when bells are ringing and children are singing and all is merry and bright.
I still love the look in my little cousins’ eyes when they tell me about what Santa brought them last night.
I still believe in the healing power of this season.
But more than that, I believe in the necessity of letting pain in, even in a time where it appears to be strictly forbidden.
Feel what you need to feel. Smile and sob. Break and beautify.
Stop focusing so much on having yourself a merry little Christmas and just have yourself a Christmas.
Sometimes, that’s all that you can do.