so the song goes.
But for so many people, it’s really not.
It’s hard for those who have lost someone, for people prone to depression, for those without homes, without love, without hope. It’s difficult because the hype, the myth of Christmas and other winter holidays says that this is the most wonderful time of the year.
My Christmases are fine. I really can’t complain. I had some that were difficult — the year that my father was near death from liver cancer, but was still in his hospital bed in my parents’ house in the family room. I was living at home that year going to graduate school for my Masters of Library Science degree. I’ll never forget my dad telling me to go to where he kept some money and take out a certain amount and with tears in his eyes and a voice cracking and breaking, telling me to get a nice pin for my mother for Christmas. You’d have to know that before he became ill, I had never seen my father cry, although he did always laugh a lot and was a very silly and funny man. Once he became ill, though, he became much more emotional and I saw him cry and get choked up a great deal.
Anyways, the money he gave me wasn’t enough for a very nice pin, but he couldn’t have known that. So I, poor graduate student that I was, bought her a pin for about twice the amount that he gave me but didn’t say a thing to him about the price. I didn’t want him to feel badly about the money. He knew, we all knew that it was his last Christmas with us. I don’t think he was so much afraid of death as he was sad that he would be without the people that he loved and he knew that we would miss him. I wonder if he knew just how much we would miss him.
The other couple of difficult Christmases were just before and just after I divorced my ex-husband. You see, we had decided one year right after Thanksgiving that we would get divorced, but I had decided to wait until after Christmas to tell anyone because I didn’t want to ruin my family’s holiday. It didn’t turn out to be such a good decision because apparently, since we were together during Christmas, some members of my family took that to mean that my ex, M, and I were doing well. “You gave each other presents!,” my mother said. “You put on an Oscar caliber performance that year.”
Oscar caliber?! Oh my. People really do see what they want to see. I was civil to him, nothing more, nothing less. He? He really ticked me off that Christmas because he was talking to my family about our possible future plans when he knew full well that there was no future. Whenever he said something like that and people looked at me or asked me directly for a response, I said nothing. I was silent. Silently fuming, that is. And we gave each other presents? Oh, I can’t remember what we gave each other, but they certainly weren’t any tokens of romance or anything at all personal.
I had always been really nutty about Christmas, absolutely loving it, wanting to put up the Christmas tree early, decorate early, have Christmas music on all the time, etc. That particular year I didn’t even put a tree up.
The next year was difficult too because I was alone and starting a life over. No matter how bad a marriage or relationship is, it’s an adjustment to start over. And there I was, alone. Part of me was terrified that I would be alone the rest of my life. Part of me was terrified that I wouldn’t be alone the rest of my life. Yeah, I was pretty mixed up.
But it got better. And better. Frank and I actually had a Christmas-themed wedding on Dec. 28, 1996. So I loved Christmas again. Loved, Judy? Why the past tense? Oh, I still like Christmas, but I have to admit that the commercialization of it and the extra work involved in the holiday does take some of the love out of it. But it’s also a lot of fun experiencing Christmas with a child.
A child who is also mixed up about Christmas. Case in point. About a month ago, Nate was telling me that he likes Christmas more than his birthday because he gets more presents at Christmas. So of course I had to bring out the “Christmas isn’t about the presents” lecture and this was his response, said with an exasperated sigh:
I know, Mom . . . . It’s about the snow.
UH-OH
Yeah. Quick Baby Jesus lesson right there in the car. Did it stick? Well, most of the talk now is about Santa Claus so I’m guessing that Santa has ultimate ranking over Jesus at this point.
*sigh*
Christmas
Maybe The Most Confusing Time of the Year
That would work for me.
You?
