I can't remember a time when I didn't end up low in spirits over the Christmas period. Not depressed, just 'flat'.
Although I've recognised the problems that inevitably lead to melancholy and pensiveness, I can't avoid this low and confused state of mind. It's not from lack of trying. This year I became involved in charity work on Christmas day, and although it was an interesting and worthwhile experience, it only served to add to my distaste for Christmas.
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I have very few memories of Christmas as a child in the family home. This bothers me enormously. Why can't I recall these times? Our Christmas tree was a cypress pine. I suppose Dad used to cut it from the roadside near town. I can't remember. But at least I do remember the tree, coloured glass balls, and crepe paper streamers twisted across the ceiling.
At 11 years of age, I remember finding two brightly coloured plastic hoolah hoops behind Mum's wardrobe - Christmas presents for my sister and me. Mine was lime green. I was so disappointed not having a surprise for Christmas, all because I snooped. And at about 13 or 14 years of age, my mother sat up late on Christmas Eve at the sewing machine making my sister and me an apron for Christmas. Mine was blue checked gingham with a heart-shaped bib and trimmed with white rick-rack braid.
And the five of us walked with Mum to church for the one religious service we would attend - it was always after breakfast, but before we opened presents. Dad never came with us, and he never drove us. It was a long walk.
That's it! That is my total recollection of Christmas as a child and teenager at home. Why? Why can't I remember what we ate, or if I made gifts for my mother? It's as if these times of my life have just been wiped off the slate. It bothers me.
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Christmas with my own young children around me was fun. That period of my life seemed reasonably 'normal' at the time. But life turned very sour for me. Amid the sourness, I began to dread Christmas. With much work, I have moved on from that time, but left over anguish from troubled years refuses to completely heal. I don't know how to get rid of it, and I still dread Christmas.
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And there's so much waste. Excessiveness. Meaningless gestures. Hypocrisy. Hype. Expectation. It just doesn't sit well with me.
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In November, a friend and her husband left the town they had called home for such a long time, to retire to the coast. I invited them around for a meal, and we vowed to keep in touch. Knowing how difficult such a change would be, I felt sure she would be feeling a little lost on Christmas day, despite having her family around her. I didn't have her phone number, but I found a likely one in the directory and called her on Christmas morning.
She was surprised, and genuinely delighted that I had contacted her. Although we only saw each other sporadically while we lived in the same town, her delight at hearing from me at this challenging time in her life was the highlight of my day. . . . .Why?
I soon drifted back into the lustreless mood that has lasted for days.
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It will pass. It always does. I'm glad to see the back of Christmas every year. Right now I will remove the decorations from my tree, pack them away until next year, throw the tree into the trailer, and perhaps my state of mind will begin to lighten.
A meaningful gift: a bunch of faded home-grown roses.
3 comments:
Hi Gaye
You are far from alone in your feelings.
The caring professions work overtime at this time of year, for the sorts of reasons you mention.
Traumas escalate.
Sadnesses escape the tight-fitting lids we use to keep them buried. Somehow the supposed joy - unless it is genuinely felt - leads to depression, when the sham and empty "jollity" fails to convince ourselves that everything is "great".
It often isn't.
Anyway, I feel the same about New Year as you do about Christmas - all that "reviewing of the year" just makes me realise I have not saved the World.
And I probably won't in 2010 either.
Makes me want to just keep on doing what I am best at. That's all that I can do.
Hang in there.
Cheers
Denis
Thank you so much for writing honestly and from the heart, even though the mood is not buoyant. The phone call to your friend really apin odd for her, too. Keep up the good work in self-reflection and writing about it in your inimitable style, dear Gaye XX
I'm just thinking, Christmas is SUPPOSED to be depressing. Go on: pinpoint the most depressing day of the year. Winter solstice, of course. The daylight hours are at their shortest. Its just started snowing, there is nothing to eat in the garden and no food for the pig. Whats worse, there are months and months and months of just hanging on in there until spring.
That's Christmas day. Yet...we got creative. We found ways to get over this worst day of the year. We sang songs, used our house-bound time to make gifts, brought home whatever greenery there was to cheer us up, got positive about all the snow.
If we start out depressed, we are starting in the correct Christmas spirit. And if we work out how to trawl some happiness and love out of even this, then there is reason for faith. Whenever the doldrums and dark days strike, we can remember what we did to get over Christmas, and this is something to be cheery about.
Hey, I like this comment of mine. I didn't think of it until I read you post actually. So this idea is our co-creation. Gaye, I hope we have more!
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