Three years ago, I was living in an apartment post-divorce, and I was pulling out all of the plastic bins and cardboard boxes filled with Christmas decorations, getting ready to make my tiny little space look festive. However, as I strung the tree with lights and hung garland on the shelves, I really wasn’t feeling the Christmas spirit at all. While Christmas had always been my absolute favorite holiday, that year I was oddly reluctant to get out the boxes and set up the tree. Nearly every ornament I pulled from the box and unwrapped felt like a painful reminder of a life I was no longer living. Hearing songs waxing poetic about how it was the “hap-happiest season” made me grind my teeth at their aggressive positivity.
I remember forcing myself to hang the ornaments on the tree anyway, and bake the cookies, and attend all of the events because I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. Perhaps I hoped I would snap out of it, but I never did. I carried around a miserable sort of longing for January, when everyone around me would hop down from their holiday high and feel the dark winter gloom that I was feeling.
I’m thankful that I’m no longer feeling that way this Christmas, but I definitely have a newfound empathy and respect for the Scrooges of the season. The people who we see around us on a daily basis — the grump arguing with the postal worker, the frazzled mom breezing past the Salvation Army bell-ringer standing outside the store, the teacher who was too overwhelmed to plan a classroom Christmas party — may all be dealing with issues of their own, sometimes invisible hardships that outsiders will never see. Many of them are just trying to survive the holiday season, and they hate the incessant reminder that we’re supposed to be enjoying every moment of this last month of the year.
This season, I’m holding a special place in my heart for:
- People who have just lost a loved one, and this season will now always be a bittersweet reminder of the person they’re missing who is no longer here.
- People who are internally struggling with addiction or alcoholism or clinical depression, and all of the holiday cheer just feels like background noise to the inner turmoil or numbness that they’re feeling.
- People who are dealing with chronic pain or a medical issue that holds them back from participating (or wanting to participate) in all of the holiday events. The guilt from turning down party invitations right and left can be daunting.
- People who have just lost a job or are financially struggling, and the burden to keep giving and purchasing and donating feels overwhelming this time of year.
- People who are dealing with the mental health of a family member (or perhaps even living in an abusive situation), and they’re trying so hard to smile and decorate and pretend like everything at home is just fine, when it actually isn’t.
- People who are all alone on Christmas, and the media has them surrounded with perfect images of family gatherings and holiday dinners around a picturesque dining table, all while they’re eating takeout in their living room at home after pulling a double shift at work.
