(In this post, I am putting away the professor podium for a bit and the following warning is issued: The following personal history is indeed soul-bearing and maybe a little freaky to read, but hopefully serves a purpose.)
As my surviving grandparents had starting going to Florida before Thanksgiving and my brothers went to college, and had graduated from college and got married, I began to hate the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I thought they were boring and empty and lonely.
The penultimate of my discontent during my high school years was one Christmas Eve when my mother said,
I demanded that my one brother who was home, my mother and father do it after the TV show away from the TV. I was mad that opening presents was profaned in such a manner.
As my family evolved to just me and my parents at home and my brothers coming home for only a few days, Christmas was just terrible. Mom and Dad just laid around and did not seem to want to do anything special or create any traditions.
I made my complaint about Christmas being boring to my mother several times. She said that it was real life. A few times she added the "Everyone knows that . . . ." My desired response was "Well then why in &*#$ did not you not tell me so I would know?" (But I held my tongue.)
I sang a solo Christmas Day 1984 in church--This Little Child by Scott Wesley Brown, which was a serious Christmas song that was as much political commentary as an affirmation of belief. On the way home in the car my brother laughed at me saying that I looked like I was in pain. I elbowed him hard and said that I was indeed in pain--and he was not respecting it (I still don't think he got it).
As a senior in college I cooked up an excuse to avoid being home for Christmas by volunteering to work for free at a TV station news department writing copy and operating the teleprompter and working the assignment desk as an assistant. I just did not want to be home because I perceived that there would be conflict with the few who were there.
During my first year in seminary, on December 27, 1987 I made a decision to drive eight hours in a bad snow storm from Des Moines to Minneapolis because I had to get out of the house (on a good day it would have only taken four hours). It was against my better judgment as I did not have a credit card and I had a burnt out headlight, but it was my choice, and I just felt that I could not stand being at home any longer, and I would rather have been lonely in my apartment than at home.
I came to hate Christmas as a holiday and felt it to be empty. It wasn't that I was not getting what I wanted in terms of presents, but no one in my family was committed to create any warmth or tradition.
When my wife miscarried just before Christmas, I realized while walking into my nearby Meijer that the pain from it distracted me from the loathing of Christmas. In this case I had replaced one pain for another
Christmas did not start to become good again until my daughter had turned two--as I and my wife could make some decisions on creating traditions.
Expectation:
Expectation is both what you are looking forward to and what you believe should happen. As I look back at those years, I had the expectation that Christmas was supposed to be this really warm and fulfilling time, and other people were supposed to help make it so.
As my expectation began to be dashed Christmas after Christmas, I began to get cynical about the Christmas holiday. Of course I still believed in the story of Jesus's birth, but I began to take note that the celebration of Christmas was not in the Bible and that the repetition of Christmas Hymns was getting old. I thought that the endless playing of Christmas music in stores and on the radio and in my secretary's office was pointless. Maybe Ebenezer Scrooge, as fictional as he was . . . had a point.
As I look back now, yes, my parents showed their humanity and probably their own surviving by not creating anything special at Christmas for their teenage son at home. Yeah . . . I think that they could have done better, but how I analyze and look back at them is a choice . . . I do not think that there is a right or wrong answer to what was really happening three decades ago, but how I choose to think affects how I feel now. It turned out best to forgive them and to move on.
The journey has taught me that how I do think about creating expectation and magic versus self-sabotage at Christmas matters. I admit that during all of those years I had engaged in a negative-mental filter and self-fulfilling prophecy. I began to expect that Christmas was going to be terrible--and it was and that Christmas was terrible because my family did not get together like other families did.
Christmas is not magic, but it does not have to be tragic.
As a rational, educated adult in my mid-40's, I still think that Christmas is over-done and over-exploited--in other words I am still critical of what is now the holiday season. I do think that many people are looking for Christmas to provide wonder and fulfillment and meaning in an otherwise empty life and will spend money pushing that envelope to feel that Christmas Spirit.
I think that there can be some meaning in Christmas, but it will indeed be only be some and will not make us feel complete and perfect. That is okay.
Acceptance and Change
If we were expecting Christmas to make us feel totally complete and perfect, we will feel disappointed. For many of us, we have to stop playing the passive role in expecting meaning and fulfillment to just happen to us or be delivered to us. Our dysfunctional families are still the same dysfunctional families and they are not about to change--but we can change ourselves.
Some of us have to stop dwelling on all of the past empty Christmases and decide what we can do now to give us some meaning. It is not a perfect process because some will have to grieve the past to move on. Grieving may include having anger and depression because of the hurt and wasted years.
I think that after getting past the grief, acceptance means that we begin to look for what is good-even if it is the 200th time you have heard Jingle Bell Rock. I think that sometimes to search for what is good and enjoyable at the moment makes it more pleasant even if the painful past Christmases are still in the back of your mind. Nothing is all bad or good.
At this point there are 21 days until Christmas. I would like to think if you relate to this material, you have time to begin to turn things around a little.
As my surviving grandparents had starting going to Florida before Thanksgiving and my brothers went to college, and had graduated from college and got married, I began to hate the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. I thought they were boring and empty and lonely.
The penultimate of my discontent during my high school years was one Christmas Eve when my mother said,
Just bring the presents in here and we will open them while we watch TV.
I demanded that my one brother who was home, my mother and father do it after the TV show away from the TV. I was mad that opening presents was profaned in such a manner.
As my family evolved to just me and my parents at home and my brothers coming home for only a few days, Christmas was just terrible. Mom and Dad just laid around and did not seem to want to do anything special or create any traditions.
I made my complaint about Christmas being boring to my mother several times. She said that it was real life. A few times she added the "Everyone knows that . . . ." My desired response was "Well then why in &*#$ did not you not tell me so I would know?" (But I held my tongue.)
I sang a solo Christmas Day 1984 in church--This Little Child by Scott Wesley Brown, which was a serious Christmas song that was as much political commentary as an affirmation of belief. On the way home in the car my brother laughed at me saying that I looked like I was in pain. I elbowed him hard and said that I was indeed in pain--and he was not respecting it (I still don't think he got it).
As a senior in college I cooked up an excuse to avoid being home for Christmas by volunteering to work for free at a TV station news department writing copy and operating the teleprompter and working the assignment desk as an assistant. I just did not want to be home because I perceived that there would be conflict with the few who were there.
During my first year in seminary, on December 27, 1987 I made a decision to drive eight hours in a bad snow storm from Des Moines to Minneapolis because I had to get out of the house (on a good day it would have only taken four hours). It was against my better judgment as I did not have a credit card and I had a burnt out headlight, but it was my choice, and I just felt that I could not stand being at home any longer, and I would rather have been lonely in my apartment than at home.
I came to hate Christmas as a holiday and felt it to be empty. It wasn't that I was not getting what I wanted in terms of presents, but no one in my family was committed to create any warmth or tradition.
When my wife miscarried just before Christmas, I realized while walking into my nearby Meijer that the pain from it distracted me from the loathing of Christmas. In this case I had replaced one pain for another
Christmas did not start to become good again until my daughter had turned two--as I and my wife could make some decisions on creating traditions.
Expectation:
Expectation is both what you are looking forward to and what you believe should happen. As I look back at those years, I had the expectation that Christmas was supposed to be this really warm and fulfilling time, and other people were supposed to help make it so.
As my expectation began to be dashed Christmas after Christmas, I began to get cynical about the Christmas holiday. Of course I still believed in the story of Jesus's birth, but I began to take note that the celebration of Christmas was not in the Bible and that the repetition of Christmas Hymns was getting old. I thought that the endless playing of Christmas music in stores and on the radio and in my secretary's office was pointless. Maybe Ebenezer Scrooge, as fictional as he was . . . had a point.
As I look back now, yes, my parents showed their humanity and probably their own surviving by not creating anything special at Christmas for their teenage son at home. Yeah . . . I think that they could have done better, but how I analyze and look back at them is a choice . . . I do not think that there is a right or wrong answer to what was really happening three decades ago, but how I choose to think affects how I feel now. It turned out best to forgive them and to move on.
The journey has taught me that how I do think about creating expectation and magic versus self-sabotage at Christmas matters. I admit that during all of those years I had engaged in a negative-mental filter and self-fulfilling prophecy. I began to expect that Christmas was going to be terrible--and it was and that Christmas was terrible because my family did not get together like other families did.
Christmas is not magic, but it does not have to be tragic.
As a rational, educated adult in my mid-40's, I still think that Christmas is over-done and over-exploited--in other words I am still critical of what is now the holiday season. I do think that many people are looking for Christmas to provide wonder and fulfillment and meaning in an otherwise empty life and will spend money pushing that envelope to feel that Christmas Spirit.
I think that there can be some meaning in Christmas, but it will indeed be only be some and will not make us feel complete and perfect. That is okay.
Acceptance and Change
If we were expecting Christmas to make us feel totally complete and perfect, we will feel disappointed. For many of us, we have to stop playing the passive role in expecting meaning and fulfillment to just happen to us or be delivered to us. Our dysfunctional families are still the same dysfunctional families and they are not about to change--but we can change ourselves.
Some of us have to stop dwelling on all of the past empty Christmases and decide what we can do now to give us some meaning. It is not a perfect process because some will have to grieve the past to move on. Grieving may include having anger and depression because of the hurt and wasted years.
I think that after getting past the grief, acceptance means that we begin to look for what is good-even if it is the 200th time you have heard Jingle Bell Rock. I think that sometimes to search for what is good and enjoyable at the moment makes it more pleasant even if the painful past Christmases are still in the back of your mind. Nothing is all bad or good.
At this point there are 21 days until Christmas. I would like to think if you relate to this material, you have time to begin to turn things around a little.
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