The Holiday Season brings out a few joyously content Christmas elves and angels who seem to never grow weary in their mission of spreading peace and goodwill to all men. Most of us will admit, however, that at best, this special time of year leaves us with mixed emotions. There are a number of factors contributing to our dismay, including unrealistic expectations (of ourselves and others), as well as significant losses. In addition, the message that we are not enough (and that we are not doing enough) is constantly before us in a myriad of ways. Thus, no matter how we may strive to keep the right mindset, it is often difficult to hold on to the joy that is meant to be ours during this special time of the year.
Christmas has often been a complicated season for me for various reasons. When I was very young, before our mother passed away, Christmas was a fulfillment of childhood dreams. My parents were struggling financially, to the point that they had to eventually leave the little house they owned and move into an old trailer in the middle of a cow pasture where my dad traded labor for rent. They managed, however, to put the gifts I wanted the most under a beautifully decorated tree each of the first seven years of my life. After our terrible loss when our mother was no longer there to put the magical touches on the holiday, my maternal grandmother took over for a few years until she and my grandpa returned to Alaska.
Maybe because I had been old enough to really absorb the magic of the holiday that was created by my mother and grandmother, it felt like a huge loss to me when that type of Christmas was no longer available to me. In my young mind, I could not sort out the reasons for the changes. Looking back, I think maybe life was just too overwhelming for my dad and his new wife. My dad had grown up in a large family, in the mountains of Georgia where my Granny's sole focus was keeping her family together with enough food in their bellies to keep them satisfied. Anything beyond that was pure fantasy, and she didn't have time or energy for fanciful thinking. Thus, my dad didn't have the Christmas fantasy background that had been fostered in my mother, who was a much-loved and doted-upon, only child.
Taking matters into our own hands, my brother Jimmy and I found various ways to do the best we could to make our house a bit more festive each holiday season. There was the old artificial tree with color-coded branches that we carefully reconstructed and decorated to the best of our ability a few years. On other occasions, we would head out to the woods and chop down a straggly cedar tree and drag it back to the house. My brother remembers our dad cutting the top out of a pine tree for us to use. No matter what, our juvenile efforts always resembled Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. Looking back, I guess those efforts provided me with what felt like a tiny bit of control over what seemed like such a huge loss. Now that I am an adult, I realize the loss manifested itself in the trappings of Christmas, but what I was really mourning was the loss of my mother, who had been the one to pull the holidays together for our family, In my maturity, I understand that it would not have mattered if my dad and stepmom had pulled off the finest Christmas ever; it would not have replaced the memories of the Christmas times before our family suffered such loss.
As a mother myself, I tried to create a Christmas that would give my children their own special memories. I did at first. Later, the brokenness of my own relationship with their father and the dysfunctional life we were living always overshadowed any momentary joy they may have had. This was manifested in a tense atmosphere, verbal abuse, fights, and fear. At one point in our life, a complete lack of finances left us with no Christmas whatsoever, except what others provided. We spent that Christmas day alone without gifts or anything to eat other than a pot of beans, awaiting the impending repossession of our only vehicle and eviction from our apartment.
With Mike, Christmas became beautiful to me once again. I had love, peace, a beautiful home, and a tree to decorate. We agreed to focus on other families in need and didn't buy presents for each other or frivolous gifts for the family. Christmas became meaningful and comforting to me during the first three years of our life together. Then, in September 2008, Josh passed away. I didn't know how to live life without my son, and I definitely didn't know how to muddle my way through the holidays so shortly after his death. We had always had a live Christmas tree, but that year I didn't have the energy. Mike went out a bought an artificial tree that year, set it up, and hoped that I would decorate it. I hated that tree and all it represented. That artificial tree represented all that was wrong with the holiday season that year. My heart was exploding with grief but I forced myself to hang ornaments on the tree, sobbing with each reminder that Josh's special ornaments brought to mind. Later, I would give myself permission to do what was best for me, but that year, I wasn't able to do anything but go through the motions for the sake of others.
I suppose that is where the above statement is where this rambling essay is taking me:
"Later I would give myself permission to do what was best for me."
And while this sounds self-centered, when I embraced this concept, it set me free to give of myself more completely to others. The next Christmas, I took all those ornaments that ripped my year in two with their reminder of loss and gifted them to my daughter. I bought different ornaments and eventually found my way back to cutting a real tree and disposing of the one that was artificial. I began collecting vintage ornaments that reminded me of those beautiful Christmas times when I was a little girl. Sometimes, I don't put up a tree at all. It depends on how overwhelmed I feel with the holidays. Sometimes I put up lights and other years I do not. One year, I dug up a 12-inch, baby pine and put tiny bows on it and that was our only tree. There are years I make a gift for everyone I know and other years that don't. For many years I spend several days dragging out, unpacking, and setting up my more than fifty nativities. In other years, like this one, they remain in their boxes, hidden deep in the closet.
Each year brings different challenges, fresh heartaches, and the pain of deep grief that never truly goes away and I remind myself each Holiday Season that there are many ways one can embrace the holiday season and many of them don't fit inside the proverbial box. Part of the joy I now find each Christmas is discovering ways I can make THIS year meaningful even if it doesn't look like any other Christmas.
May the true joy and peace of this holiday season fill our hearts in difficult times.