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.
It’s really sad, but I caught off-guard by my mother demanding I sing. First of all, I haven’t sang the regular Christmas carols in several years. I still know them, of course, because thy are so endemic in our society. Second, I’m not a dancing monkey who is trained to sing on demand. Third, as neutral as I am about Christmas, it’s still not a holiday I celebrate, so I wasn’t really feeling the singing.
But, on the other hand, my father had little joy in his life. What harm would it do to sing a few songs for him? My mother started singing a carol, and I joined in. So did my father. They didn’t remember all the words, but I did. We did three songs, and I was ok with it. It’s definitely not something I would choose to do, but I wasn’t put off by it, either.
I think in the last leg of my parents’ journey on earth, I can let go of a lot of the long-term anger. Not to say we’re going to be besties because we are not. My mother is still my mother, which means I am on my guard. I don’t share anything personal because I don’t want it to be used against me. But, I can chat about inconsequential things without inwardly freaking out about it.
I have said that as long as I think about them as two really elderly people in general, I can have compassion for them. They have been dealt an objectively shitty hand in the last decade or so, and I would not wish it on anyone.
I’m meditative this Christmas Eve(ish). I do not hate Christmas like I once did. I have let go of the anger and the rage, but I don’t have any warm fuzzies about it, either. I can appreciate the general goodwill and the love within communities, but I can’t tie it directly to Christmas. Christmas itself means nothing to me, but I can have warm feelings towards others.
It’s the best I can do, and I think it’s much better than me seething in rage over a holiday that had held so many negative connotations to me when I was younger. It represented so much of what I disliked about this country, and while I still have my qualms about the holiday, I can appreciate it being a celebration of loved ones.
I’m not going to do anything for it as it’s a relief to let go of those expectations. While I don’t hate it any longer, I’m not particularly fond of it, either. At most, I will just wait patiently for it to be over for another year. It has no personal meaning to me, but it’s no longer offensive, either.
It’s a relief, honestly. I didn’t like hating Christmas. I felt vaguely guilty about it, especially when I would post about how much I hated it on Facebook. I didn’t want to yuck other people’s yum, but I thought it was fair to post whatever I wanted on my own goddamn wall. I did get some pushback from people in my life at the time who really liked Christmas.
My thought was that if you didn’t want to see it on my own goddamn wall, you can block me, unfriend me, mute me, or whatever. I consider it my house, which means it’s no one eles’ business what I do with it.
Now, I can just cheerfully ignore it without feeling the anger. I’ll take that any day.