By Anonymous
Do you know about my Christmas? What my Christmas was really like?
I have a pretty good idea about yours. Traditions of Cookies, letters to Santa, stockings, pajamas, and presents. An abundance of food and laughter, a little argument mixed in. There are plenty of books, movies, TV specials, and commercials about your Christmas.
My recurring holiday tradition is watching the anxious faces of my parents become more and more tortured as the days inched closer to Christmas. They tried to hide their sadness that they did not have money for gifts but I could always tell.
My Christmas isn’t glamorous, so you won’t see much about it on the Hallmark channel. I don’t see my Christmas represented in the media, except when used as an inspiration “feel-good” story for viewers. You might see the main character of a Christmas movie press his face to my frosty window to get a glimpse of my Christmas. Seeing my Christmas will somehow help him realize that his life is not “that bad.” His Christmas finale will be undoubtedly cheery as he learns the “true meaning of Christmas” because my Christmas has given him perspective about “how bad other people have it.”
I am amazed at how you pour your time and money into charitable acts in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Even more, you still managed to have that big, beautiful, storybook Christmas day every year. I noticed your house has four different fully decorated Christmas trees shining brightly through all the windows. Did you know that we did not have even one? Yes, I saw there was no need for you to sacrifice or go without. We are so different.
Did you ever notice my mother crying as she combed the picked-over shelves for gifts at Wal-Mart late at night on Christmas Eve? She tried not to let us see the gifts she had placed in her basket, so we looked away to help keep her secrets. It’s difficult to be excited about the gifts selected out of reluctance and desperation.
One of the hardest days of the New Year is returning to school and having to lie about my Christmas. Children are so excited to tell each other what they got for Christmas! On my turn to share, it’s was easier to invent hypothetical possessions because confessing that a “box of oranges” was the highlight of the season was too hard to admit without crying. Even worse was thinking that Santa must have skipped my house because I was “naughty” and undeserving.
When I comment, “I don’t really enjoy Christmas” and you reply with astonishment, “How can anyone not like Christmas?!” I feel sad and small. If you can’t see why anyone would not like Christmas, maybe that means you don’t see what Christmas is like for me.
When it comes to excusing how poor my family was, or how little we had, I heard you say “they don’t know any better” and “they have so little but are so happy.” I guess it’s too painful for you to acknowledge that I do know better and the “little” I have feels like a gut punch without fail every holiday season. How can you presume to know that I am happy in having so little? What other options do I have? Perhaps you mean to say that happiness is not tied to possessions? That if someone like me can be happy, you should be happy automatically? You use my life of scarcity as an object lesson for how privileged people should be grateful. Claiming that happiness doesn’t come from what we have is entirely different if you’re the one with the abundance of possessions.
It’s funny how I can see you, and yet you never seem to notice me. I guess my face is lost to you in some sack lunch for the homeless or unwrapped gifts for various Christmas charity drives.
My Christmas is not found in any Christmas celebration. It’s a Christmas that is never talked about but is found in the hearts and homes of Children all across the world. My Cratchit Christmas was used as a metaphor, an object lesson, the focus of ward service projects, but no ghosts of Christmas present ever came bearing gifts or food. Ignorance and Want were year-round members of my family.
Even as I get older, even as my financial circumstances change, I still continue to feel the gut punch of Christmas every year. It’s been built in like a tradition.
I carry my mother’s Christmas trauma with me. As I wrap up gifts for my children on Christmas eve, I feel guilt for my abundance. I second-guess myself and ask, “is it enough? Will they feel like Christmas is magical, or will they feel let down?”
As though being let down on Christmas is the worst thing to feel.
The expectation to make Christmas magical hurt my mom, and now it’s hurting me in different ways. It’s Intergenerational Christmas trauma. As a parent I ask myself, “Why am I doing this? Why do I think this matters so much? Is it good for my children to have one day a year where they are showered with gifts, or is it better that they’re provided for all year long? Am I overcorrecting? Giving them “too good” of a Christmas, setting them up with memories they feel they must live up to with their children? What if they saw more of the deprivation of my childhood, would they be more grateful?”
I try focusing the season on the Savior, on his symbolic disavowal of privilege, station and power. Sometimes it’s hard to see his followers failing to do the same.
How are you treating your privilege and abundance this season? How are you addressing want? Do your Christmas traditions grind the faces of the poor?
I can totally relate. My late husband used to have SAD and was depressed every Christmas and went out of his way to make sure that I was miserable too. I have four grown kids now, and we keep Christmas modest. But it is a challenge to stay “happy” for a sustained period of at least a month. Acknowledge that this is a time for quiet reflection and evaluating what really counts in my life. I have lost so many people in my life in the month of December over the years, and got a divorce on December 17th. Some years, it seems as if it is best just to endure the holiday, I do think unrealistic expectation do not help either
This post taught me so much; you are vulnerable and brave in articulating taboo subjects in a society we wish to believe is truly a meritocracy. It isn’t, and I am sorry you have to should that burden. Thank you for sharing your experience.
“My Cratchit Christmas was used as a metaphor, an object lesson, the focus of ward service projects, but no ghosts of Christmas present ever came bearing gifts or food. Ignorance and Want were year-round members of my family.” This is such a powerful image and so heart wrenching. Thank you for your honesty. It has me really looking inside.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I imagine many of us have had similar experiences and I can totally relate to your dilemma… what should Christmas be now for me, for my children? What can I do to change it for us?
<3 been there. as the mom. lots of christmases cobbled together with yard sale/thrift store presents under the tree for my kids. things i'd spent hours sewing with a borrowed machine and scraps. we've even been the object of well-meaning charity from neighbors who have had their kids wrap up some old toys for my kids to open. not my favorite.
Christmas is a scam.
That totally stinks. It is amazing that traditions can cause so much heartache and expectation. I hope you can create your own that will cause smiles instead of emptiness.
I can relate in so many ways. We had very little growing up. Making up gifts was all I could do when school started again after the holiday break. Being the oldest, I knew very early about the struggles my parents faced to provide a magical Christmas each year. We were happy to get what we got, but it was hard to be one of the poor kids. It took me a long time to recover from the sadness I often felt at Christmastime. It took me a long time to realize that comparison is the thief of joy.
I still struggle with Christmas. It’s so commercial, the focus seems to be on everything except Jesus.
I’m trying to find the peace and the joy, some years I’m better at it than others. This year has been up and down, but ultimately I think it will be up.