I love this discussion, and it dovetails nicely with what I've been thinking about lately. I've been having my own Christmas sads - a second, different variety than the ones I was talking about earlier this month - and I've found myself saying over and over "it's not actually about what I will or won't be doing on Christmas, it's about once again not getting my needs met."
It's become clear that, just as your friend (or was it you?) said, holidays - and Christmas perhaps the most, since it's perhaps the most holiday-ey holiday of them all - is a lens through which other (non-holiday-related) issues get focused. Loss, disappointment, expectations unmet. Family dynamics, relationship dynamics, social dynamics. The reality of your financial situation, living situation, romantic situation.
For me, this year, it's a reckoning with the nature of my familial relationships, the limits of my illness, and the limits of living in a society that does not value or accommodate the disabled. It is, as you said, a facing of reality.
And I think you're right that so much of the excess of this time of year is born of trying to avoid facing those realities. Which itself leads to its own miseries: the overspending, over-imbibing, bad decisions leading to guilt or shame, anxiety leading to everything from just weird vibes to actual abuse. Which then compounds into making the holiday a time to face EVEN MORE TRUTHS... and on and on and on, through the generations. (I think here of my grandmother, ever the codependent people-pleaser, who could never sit still for all the cooking and decorating and cleaning and dressing up, making everyone around her anxious... and then my mother, who could never sit still for all the cooking and decorating and cleaning and dressing up etc... and then my sister and I who both love Christmas but have an ambivalent relationship with the family traditions around how the women in our family celebrate it...)
It also makes me think of a realization I had once about Burning Man. That it, like Christmas, is an opportunity for introspection, personal growth, and reckoning with the truth - of your relationships, of your life choices, of your mental health. The reason there is different than with the holidays - specifically, it's because if you're somewhere you can be and do WHATEVER YOU WANT, and you're still not happy, you have nowhere to look but AT YOURSELF.
But the result is sort of the same. Some people take that opportunity and lean in. Some people are vaguely aware that's what's happening and don't actively engage but don't actively resist either, just kind of surfing that wave. But a great many people do anything in their power to avoid looking into that mirror. I think that's why there is so incredibly much excess. It's not just because it's possible. It's because that's the only way some people can get through what I used to call Emotional Bootcamp.
Either way, like you, I've always been someone who is not only willing to be introspective, but incapable of being otherwise - even in phases when I'm trying as hard as I can to numb out and avoid, or when I'm being introspective about the wrong thing (hello, girl making vision boards and ever more complicated new calendar systems while ignoring her two-bottle-of-wine-a-night habit...). And I always find is disconcerting, and/or exhausting, when people don't take the opportunity to look inwards. Including when I'm one of them.
Which leads us to this year, where the theme for me, not only for Christmas but for everything, seems to be "facing reality." Over and over what I keep finding is that facing it may be sadder than the alternative, but it's also infinitely less work. And it's actually much less sad or scary than I would have expected. As with so many things, the anticipation of the thing is worse than the thing itself.
So anyway... all that is just a long way to say #AGREE. And also yes to Christmas, and all the things it does for us and means to us (us being you and me, but also, you know, the collective us).
I love this discussion, and it dovetails nicely with what I've been thinking about lately. I've been having my own Christmas sads - a second, different variety than the ones I was talking about earlier this month - and I've found myself saying over and over "it's not actually about what I will or won't be doing on Christmas, it's about once again not getting my needs met."
It's become clear that, just as your friend (or was it you?) said, holidays - and Christmas perhaps the most, since it's perhaps the most holiday-ey holiday of them all - is a lens through which other (non-holiday-related) issues get focused. Loss, disappointment, expectations unmet. Family dynamics, relationship dynamics, social dynamics. The reality of your financial situation, living situation, romantic situation.
For me, this year, it's a reckoning with the nature of my familial relationships, the limits of my illness, and the limits of living in a society that does not value or accommodate the disabled. It is, as you said, a facing of reality.
And I think you're right that so much of the excess of this time of year is born of trying to avoid facing those realities. Which itself leads to its own miseries: the overspending, over-imbibing, bad decisions leading to guilt or shame, anxiety leading to everything from just weird vibes to actual abuse. Which then compounds into making the holiday a time to face EVEN MORE TRUTHS... and on and on and on, through the generations. (I think here of my grandmother, ever the codependent people-pleaser, who could never sit still for all the cooking and decorating and cleaning and dressing up, making everyone around her anxious... and then my mother, who could never sit still for all the cooking and decorating and cleaning and dressing up etc... and then my sister and I who both love Christmas but have an ambivalent relationship with the family traditions around how the women in our family celebrate it...)
It also makes me think of a realization I had once about Burning Man. That it, like Christmas, is an opportunity for introspection, personal growth, and reckoning with the truth - of your relationships, of your life choices, of your mental health. The reason there is different than with the holidays - specifically, it's because if you're somewhere you can be and do WHATEVER YOU WANT, and you're still not happy, you have nowhere to look but AT YOURSELF.
But the result is sort of the same. Some people take that opportunity and lean in. Some people are vaguely aware that's what's happening and don't actively engage but don't actively resist either, just kind of surfing that wave. But a great many people do anything in their power to avoid looking into that mirror. I think that's why there is so incredibly much excess. It's not just because it's possible. It's because that's the only way some people can get through what I used to call Emotional Bootcamp.
Either way, like you, I've always been someone who is not only willing to be introspective, but incapable of being otherwise - even in phases when I'm trying as hard as I can to numb out and avoid, or when I'm being introspective about the wrong thing (hello, girl making vision boards and ever more complicated new calendar systems while ignoring her two-bottle-of-wine-a-night habit...). And I always find is disconcerting, and/or exhausting, when people don't take the opportunity to look inwards. Including when I'm one of them.
Which leads us to this year, where the theme for me, not only for Christmas but for everything, seems to be "facing reality." Over and over what I keep finding is that facing it may be sadder than the alternative, but it's also infinitely less work. And it's actually much less sad or scary than I would have expected. As with so many things, the anticipation of the thing is worse than the thing itself.
So anyway... all that is just a long way to say #AGREE. And also yes to Christmas, and all the things it does for us and means to us (us being you and me, but also, you know, the collective us).