Before I start, let me say that I don’t abhor the Birth of Christ, and I don’t abhor our services at church (on the contrary, I LOVE our candlelight services, I love focusing on the birth and salvation and sharing it with others). I don’t abhor what the word “Christmas” means and what it is meant to celebrate.
I just hate everything else. I have always had so much anxiety about Christmas as well as crushing disappointment.
When I was kid, it was all materialistic. My parents never taught us about giving, really. In fact, when my mom went back to work when I was in about 2nd grade, she became a total workaholic. Christmases were about materialism; we were spoiled rotten with gifts on Christmas morning and my parents would be exhausted from staying up all night wrapping gifts. We would drag them out of bed at very early hours, tear through our gifts, and my parents would go back to bed. My mom would get up later and start Christmas dinner. My dad would watch TV. We spent little actual time “together” that day, and I just remember my mom being so stressed that she had to prepare a big dinner. It didn’t seem “fun.” It seemed like obligatory work.
The less my time my mom spent with us (because she “had” to work 60 hours a week) the bigger the gifts. We did still keep up some traditions: we made cookie-cutter cookies every year, candy cane coffee cakes were made for Christmas morning breakfast, and we often hand painted or made ornaments. It wasn’t ALL bad, of course. We had good moments. But overall, we never learned how to GIVE. I remember, finally in high school in my first job, buying everyone christmas gifts with my own actual money. It felt good. I spent too much that year, and I didn’t save a dime. It’s the first time I remember working to give my own gifts, not asking my parents for the money.
We occasionally drove around to see Christmas lights, but my dad rarely joined us. He rarely joined us in anything. We always felt like it was too hard to just spend time with us.
Church? I can’t remember ever attending church past Catechism. I think I was 6. When I was in high school, I attended mass with friends occasionally, once at a huge catholic church all in Latin. When I visited my cousin in Ohio, I went to church with her family, but never at christmas.
Christmas we definitely not about the birth of Christ, or our salvation in Him. It was purely materialistic.
I don’t remember many Christmases in college. I have no doubt my parents spent way too much money on us, in general they believed throwing money at us constituted a relationship. I do remember that like the last couple years of high school, I was now directly a part of Christmas dinner preparation. I didn’t mind, I felt like it was my duty, even when my brothers quite literally contributed nothing to Christmas dinner. They were boys, after all, and my dad never helped prepare dinner, so it seemed normal.
When I finally got married (the first time), I knew it was a chance to start new traditions. I honestly cannot remember my first Christmas in our first apartment, perhaps it was okay, but our first Christmas in our first home was rather traumatic. We were rather broke, we really couldn’t afford the home we bought, so money was very tight. My exes sister had a fish tank she didn’t use, just piled in a closet full of junk, so I asked her if I could have it. It was extremely dirty, and I spent a week soaking it (and the rocks) to remove any debris. I found some inexpensive items to put in the tank and got a couple fish. He had wanted a fish tank for awhile (his friends had one) so I wanted to give him something he wanted.
That Christmas, there wasn’t a single present under the tree for me at our home. Nothing handmade, not even a letter. I was devastated.
My parents made up for it, and we went over for Christmas dinner and I helped prepare the food and cleanup, as always, while the males sat around and watched TV.
In the 14 years of marriage, I received presents for Christmas from my ex only a few times. One year, he decided since I scrapbook, he would (the day before Christmas) get me a photo album (with sticky pages, something no scrapbooking person uses) and put in our photo Christmas cards we had received from friends and acquaintances. This was a couple years before we divorced, when I had told him I am reaching the end of my rope. (Don’t ask me how mother’s day, valentine’s day or any other holiday went, they were all the same).
Most of the years we were married, I hosted Christmas dinner. I spent 8 hours cleaning the house and getting it ready every year, another 5 hours preparing food, and then another 4 hours cleaning up the house. I did this with a bunch of little kids (many years, I carried one of my infants on my back or front while I prepared food) and often the most help I got was my parents buying stuff (sometimes relevant to dinner, sometimes not), my brother and sil bringing a store bought pie or rolls, and their adult children bringing nothing (but the daughter, who was vegan, brought her own dinner for me to heat up for her).
Everyone would show up, eat, stay for an hour, and go home. My brother and sil often helped do some cleanup for 15 minutes, so I was grateful for that, but I still had hours of dishes and cleaning ahead of me. Some years, we had 20+ people, usually at least 14 attended.
I hosted for 14 years, until I had finally just gotten to the point I was exhausted. Twice a year–Thanksgiving and Christmas–it was my responsibility. I really just wanted to be invited to someone else’s house.
That did happen—once. My brother hosted Thanksgiving one year, and it was lovely.
The year I stopped hosting, my brother invited my parents over for Thanksgiving. He said we were welcome to come for dessert, but we were just too large of a family to come over for a meal. Again, this year, my parents were invited Christmas eve, but we received no such invite.
My kids even saw the progression. They were tired of working so hard at it and then no one helping with anything. We spent hours preparing food and getting the house ready, then cleaning it after. Their adult cousins rarely brought a thing, and the one year I asked them to contribute directly, they did…and then refused to come the next year.
My ex was not helpful. He always found reasons to argue with me, on top of the fact he rarely helped. My sadness over the fact he rarely even selected gifts for me (and never for the kids, that was all my job) affected my reactions the rest of the day, no doubt.
None of this really seems to make the case that my Christmases have been so bad that I would hate them…I get that. But after my ex and I split up, it only got worse.
My parents continued the tradition of materialism with my children very early on. They always purchased FAR TOO MUCH for my children, most of the time message felt like I was incapable, or unable, to provide for my children. When we split up, it got worse. Instead of my children learning that time together and thought was more important than expensive gifts, my parents showered them with materialism. I asked for more than 12 years that they tone down the gifts and check with me first before giving them so much before they listened, and even then, it became more of a punishment by me that they let us all know about.
My ex barely gave the kids anything when we split. The next year, he had the oldest (12 yrs) buy all the gifts. The three years after that, it was his girlfriend who was responsible for the gifts and bought them all. Then they broke up and the kids got ONE gift each, and it wasn’t even what they wanted (he intentionally switched one gift to punish one of our girls). Then he found a new girlfriend, and now she is handling all the gifts. I guess people don’t fundamentally change.
Now I am just of the mind WHAT’S THE POINT? For instance, if my MIL spends a combination of $220 on our entire family, and we only spend $100 on her, then are we really doing the right thing? We spend weeks trying to find just the right gifts for some people, who really spend a hot minute picking up a gift card for us, or vice versa. And it’s all EXPECTED.
To me, a gift is something you give when it reminds you of someone, when you just see something you have to get because you know someone that would just love it. Christmas is just a day where people buy a bunch of crap they can’t afford, just to show “love.”
And the disappointment can be deep. My second daughter already felt rejected by her father who said he was too busy to pick her up ON Christmas day because they would be too busy (she didn’t want to spend the night like two of the girls because she no longer has a bed of her own, and her oldest sister and that sister’s friend already claimed the beds, thus they would be sleeping on the couch). They had already felt rejected on his “wedding day” because he refused to pick them up after choir practice at 11 a.m. and return them for choir at 7 p.m. because he was “too busy” with the wedding. In BOTH instances, it became entirely clear that he had plenty of time (he played video games until 4 on his “wedding day” and they just went to dinner at 5, and for Christmas no one showed up because one of our girls had a cold and they are all scared of a cold now).
My two girls that have stopped weekend visits–and were told it’s too inconvenient to pick them up Christmas day–did receive gifts from their dad, unlike my oldest daughter who received nothing from him the Christmas after she decided to stop going over for the weekends. My second daughter was in tears as she opened the gift: it was a turntable for records, it also had a cassette player and a CD player. She doesn’t own any of these and couldn’t understand the gift. If I were to guess, I would say that it was likely something he got as a gift, and regifted to her. She felt so rejected she cried in my arms for quite a time.
That’s what Christmas has become for me: disappointment, rejection, and a ton of work for a very little amount of time.
Don’t get me wrong, my children are so worth the amazing memories and I have worked so hard to provide them. I am sometimes jealous of their memories as there is no “magic” left anymore for me, so I work hard to provide THEM the magic they deserve. I don’t feel any magic anymore, I just feel sadness.
I’m sad my oldest child has completely rejected me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I long for a relationship, but not on the terms that she can be abusive.
Things have definitely gotten better since I Married Shane. Much better. And eventually the fear will go away, the anxiety, when I’ve had enough positive experiences. It IS getting better, and I’m so grateful my four younger girls GET Christmas.