Christmas

I’ve been writing sporadically, lately. It’s a difficult time of year for me. I don’t come from a religious household and my dad’s had to work more than half the Christmas’s of my life. This year he worked a double shift on Christmas Day. I don’t mind that. When I was little, it meant that we’d celebrate Christmas multiple times. One year we had three Christmases: one before the day, with Dad; one on Christmas day, because Santa doesn’t change his schedule to accommodate those who have to work on Christmas day; and one after, with all the family. I was too young at the time to appreciate how much stress and energy my parents and my grandparents must have put into making the holidays magical for my brother and me.

There was a brief time, when we were exploring our Jewish heritage, when we celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah. There was something about Hanukkah that really captured my imagination. The story behind the holiday made sense, the modern day rituals matched the story. I liked the prayers. I didn’t know what they meant, but I liked the shape of the Hebrew words as they formed on my lips.

Christmas has never made much sense to me. Is it about Jesus Christ or Santa Clause, is it about giving or receiving? The truth is that Christmas is such a mash up of different beliefs that its meaning – for me at least – is lost. The basic idea of gift-giving is nice. But the reality of it – the frenzied rush of shopping, the wish lists made, the disappointment when you don’t get exactly what you wanted, or the let down when you discover that what you wanted and received wasn’t as great as you expected it to be – is so pointlessly stressful.

My family does a quiet celebration, half the time we don’t even call it Christmas. Sometimes, it’s Solstice, sometime Christmas, sometimes we don’t even give it a name. But we do get together for a nice meal. We exchange a few nice gifts – very rarely are there any surprises. Maybe we play music or tell stories, maybe we go to a movie. We don’t go all out decorating – we haven’t had a tree in years and we’ve left our Christmas lights up two years running, – unplugged most of the year, but it’s just too much hassle to take them down and put them up again and again. I’m not saying that our way is better or worse than a full blown traditional Christmas. It simply is what it is. I suppose, the point of all this, of everything I’ve written, is that this time of year, above almost all others, is the time when I feel most isolated from the rest of the world, when I can’t hide the fact that my family and I are very different from the ordinary. I don’t mind being different, most of the time I enjoy it. Most of the time, other people don’t care much about my differences, but this time of year puts people on edge – the stress of Christmas shopping I suppose. I’ve been called out by old ladies for not wishing them a Merry Christmas, I’ve been given funny looks for saying that I don’t celebrate Christmas, and in some of the places I’ve lived I’ve been shunned because my family didn’t go to church on Christmas eve or participate in the Christmas pageant, or some other local tradition. And I suppose that what all this boils down to is that Christmas time, above all other times, reminds me of those shitty days when I was hurt and mocked and looked down on and cast out for being different and all of a sudden I’m ten years old again trying to preserve my uniqueness in a town that’s trying to crush it out of me.

I feel better, having written this. I’ve been in a funk the past few days without really being sure why. I think I’ve been working up to writing this post for a while and I’ve been afraid of what I might unbury. I’ve found it now – some emotional trauma I haven’t quite worked through yet. I won’t go into any more details, this is a blog not a therapy session, even though it’s gotten awful close to that today.

Thank you all for reading and for letting me unburden myself. I do wish everyone a happy holiday season, regardless of what holiday you celebrate or even if you don’t celebrate anything in particular at this time of year.