I have a long, complicated history with holidays. I learned the truth about Santa when I was seven or eight when I got up to check my stocking and there was nothing in it. I went to tell my mother, and she told me to go back to bed. She would talk to Santa and straighten things out. She got an hour later, and there were presents in the stocking.
I have to say that she really did her best to adapt to an American trradition that was completely foreign to her. She tried hard to give us an authentic Americn life while simultaneously making sure my father had his Taiwanese food. (The only kind of food he likes.)
When I was in middle school or early high school, I wrote an op-ed for the school paper about how commercialized Christmas had become. I was so young and naive then. I mean, it was true for the time, but fifteen-year old me would have been appalled by how much worse it is now.
I hated Christmas for decades. I was very vocal about my loathing for it when I was in my twenties and early thirties. There was one thing that brought me joy, and that was listening to every version of O Holy Night I could find because it’s the one Christmas carol I like. I made it my own holiday tradition–posting all the different versions I could find to Facebook and writing about them in my blog. I have heard dozens over the years, and I have to say that my favorite continues to be Jennifer Hudson, any version. I have included one below, and it gives me chills.
Sometime in my thirties, I started losing my hatred for it. It was slow-going, but it was noticeable. When I hit my early forties, I noticed that I no longer hated it. I didn’t like it, mind, but I was able to be neutral about it. Well, if I’m going to be completely honest, I still winced whenever I heard a carol out in the wild, but that was a very mild reaction compared to the loathing I used to feel.
By the way, I heard the first Christmas carol in the grocery store a month or more ago. It’s all they play for the whole month of December. That is way too much and way over the top. That’s part of why I dislike the holiday, to be honest. There’s no need to make it a 24/7 thing for an entire month.
My mother called me tonight (Christmas Eve) to wish me a Merry Christmas. She wanted me to sing to my father because that’s one thing he can still do–sing, I mean. He used to have a great voice and loved doing karaoke. Now, his voice is thin and toneless, but it’s still something he enjoys doing.