I’m writing this on Christmas Day, and I’m contemplative. I don’t celebrate Christmas, but everyone else in my life does. It’s another thing where I don’t mind that I’m different from everyone else, and I’m not bothered by people wishing me a Merry Christmas. it’s taken me many decades to be truly neutral about Christmas, and I still have a reflexive instinct to wish people a Merry Christmas.
I went through a period of time where I wished people Happy Holidays, but that never felt natural to me. We all know that it’s Christmas today–and, indeed, the month leading up to this day. No one thinks about Hanukkah, let alone Kwanzaa (interesting note, Hanukkah started on December 25th this year). I had to roll my eyes when some Christians got so upset about salespeople saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’ because ‘They’re taking the Christ out of Christmas!’.
Um.
I hate to break it to them, but if Jesus really did exist, he probably would have been on the side of the people salespeople who were working their asses off for peanuts during the holiday season and dealing with entitled assholes screaming at them because they could not find a PlayStation5 anywhere and little Timmy would be sooooo disappointed when he did not get one under the tree. The only thing that Christmas really celebrated these days was crass commercialism and capitalism.
Hm. Maybe I’m not as neutral about Christmas as I thought I was. But the idea of gathering with friends and/or families and/or other loved ones is a lovely one. Winter is fmy favorite season so I see nothing wrong with letting people know that I love them–even if it’s on an overly saccharinely sweet holiday.
See, I may be against traditions for the most part, but I believe in love. Love is what got me through dying (twice) and me fumbling back to some semblance of normal afterwards.
There is one holiday song duo that I like, one Christmas carol that I love, and two other Christmas-related (sort of) songs that are quite lovely, indeed. The first one is Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy by Bing Crosby and David Bowie. It’s just really beautiful.
The rest of them, though, can mostly get in the bin. Not because they’re necessarily bad songs, but because they have been so overplayed. Christmas music starts being played in the stores any time after Halloween (and one horrible yer, it started in early October). I hated that year, let me tell you what.
Note: I didn’t feel like finishng the post on Christmas, so I wrote the rest of it the next day.
I still hate the commercialization of Christmas (which started when I was in high school. I wrote an op-ed in 9th grade about how Christmas had become one month-long, overpriced commercial. That was over thirty years ago!) , and I get so tired of the forced cheer.
I don’t hate it the way I used to, but I don’t understand why people are so into it, either. Here’s Jennifer Hudson singing, O Holy Night. I actually sang that for church one Christmas. A solo. This is the only traditional Christmas carol that I love with all my heart. I get chills every time I hear it.
Sometimes, I wish I were like other people. I wish I felt something other than impatience when it comes to holidays and other traditions. Yet, like gender and religion, when I reach deep down inside, I feel nothing.
I don’t understand why I should feel a tie to people who are related to me by blood simply because we’re related. I am much more a fan of shared lived experiences and bonding with people I actually like/love rather than try to force myself to love someone I don’t even like because we have the same genes.
Like, I love my brother, but it’s not because he’s my brother. Back when we were kids and teens, I didn’t care about him at all. I didn’t dislike him, but I felt no connection to him. I knew I should because he was my brother, but I did not. When we hit our twenties, we started to connect more for a variety of reasons. And I realized that he was a really cool person, period. Not because he was my brother or because we were related, but because he just was. I enjoy spending time with him, and we have a strong relationship now. I give him emotional support and he does things for me (fixes things, mostly computer-related). It works for both of us.
This has been a really shitty year for me. I thought last year was an annoying year with several little things that I needed to deal with that annoyed the fuck out of me. I’ll take it any day over this year. I still am not ready to talk about, but I’ll just say it was worse than me dying twice.
On February 21st, the Elden Ring trailer dropped. The next morning, I had to make the hardest (yet, simultaenously, easiest) decision of my life–and I’m still not over it. And I still can’t talk about it.
It’s completely rocked me in a way that dying (twice) and waking up form a coma could not and did not. I know this sounds like hyperbole, but if anything, I am understating it. I might be able to talk about it sometime soon, but we’ll have to see.
It’s hard to keep on going when I feel like my soul is gone. I feel liek an empty shell. Not to say that I don’t laugh, cry, and feel. I do. It’s just not the same, and it’s not enough. Life is but a pale substitute now.
It’s interesting. My father is really deteriorating at a rapid pace, and I feel less pain over that than I did the traumatic experience I had in February. That’s a post for another day, though.
I am thinking about the goals I want to give myself for next year. I don’t make resolutions, but I do like to have two or three geals. Maybe it’s just semantics, but I feel more committed to goals than I do to resolutions.
I’m done for the day. I’ll write more tomorrow.