Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash
🥳The Holidays are upon us. In the US, what folks refer to as The Holidays is generally accepted to start around Thanksgiving – the third Thursday of November, though my observations suggest it really starts at the end of October, with Halloween. In the UK, in my anglo-Christian family, it was Christmas and the commercialised build up to it. Perhaps it is something else for you. Whatever The Holidays means to you, they are here and they can be a struggle for many. Suffocating societal expectations of Happy Holidays. Debt-fueling challenges to shower loved ones with gifts. Reminiscence of happier times. Remembrance of past pain. "Happy Holidays", we tell each other, persevering to manifest it as truth, wearing it like an inverted halloween mask, the scary facade on the inside. Upon us like a rabid gang armed with tinsel, Christmas music, and peppermint candy canes, intent on forcing us to ignore how we feel and join in with someone else's idea of fun, The Holidays lie waiting to sabotage some of us when we least expect it.
😣The Holidays are complicated. This post is not intended as some War on Christmas manifesto or a downer on the holiday season. I have incredibly happy memories of The Holidays: traditions, roaring fires, home-cooked family meals. The camaraderie of working shifts with friends at the local pub. My Grandma's birthday on Christmas Eve. Waking up early to open gifts. Going to bed late after too much food and far too many drinks. Friends, family, church, caroling, and more. I fondly remember my time in the church choir1, singing at midnight mass, or walking the village, caroling door to door. Or my Nana staying with us on Christmas Eve so that she could spend Christmas Day with us. And that time my Uncle Peter surprised my Nana and the rest of us, showing up at the local pub in England after calling us from his home in Canada just the night before (he was really in a hotel nearby). Or the time I surprised my mum with a visit when she thought I was spending Christmas here in the US (and yes, it was my Uncle's visit years before that inspired that surprise). My first Christmas meeting much of my girlfriend's family long before she became my wife, and the time I was welcomed into the home of Gary and Carol to eat together with many neighbours and friends. The Holidays have been filled with happiness for me and I am grateful to carry these memories with me. Yet The Holidays also represent an unhappy, twisted, ugly place. A place that ripped my cousin away in a tragic plane crash and stole the sparkle of my friend Mary, both far too soon. The annual reminder my Nana will visit nevermore, that my Grandma's birthday will be remembered without her.
The Holidays are happy moments and sad, and these moments do not cancel each other out, they weave themselves together into a complex tapestry of deep emotion that can in an instant swing from joyful remembrance to helpless sobbing and back again. This is The Holidays for me. A complicated dance of happiness and grief. Grief is good, grief is healthy if we embrace it rather than dodge it. I find my grief is a journey, walking hand in hand with my emotions as I learn a new way to live without the loves I never expected to lose.
😔The Holidays are lonely. This year is my first year alone for The Holidays since my partner and I concluded our marriage was over, since we separated, since we divorced. This is my first time publicly acknowledging that as a thing that happened. It felt crass to announce it as some thing worthy of everyone else's attention. I do not know if that is because it is or because I am just afraid or something else. There have been many days where I wished for my Nan or Mary to show up for a cup of tea and a chat to help me work that out. In some ways, they did. Grief is complicated.
After reading this, you may think I am misguided to be alone right now or to be sharing all this so candidly. Your gut reaction might be to reach out and invite me over to spend time with people for The Holidays. Please don't, though I very much appreciate the sentiment. I already have the right amount of plans (I will be spending Christmas Day with a few of my friends) and I need to do this. I need to do this and I need to do it now, this year, this moment, with these feelings. If this isn't The First Holidays Alone then I have to wait a whole year before I can get past that seemingly arbitrary yet looming milestone. Right now, I need to spend time with me and my grief, and continue our journey working out exactly how things work from this point on.
🤗The Holidays are hopeful. The Holidays are whatever you need them to be. For me, this year at least, they are a time to reflect and to grow as I come to terms with my grief, my loneliness, and the path I have lying ahead, somewhere in the unknown. I have been here before and I cleared a path to get where I am, I know I can learn to clear a different path than the one I planned. You can too. Whatever you are facing as the year end draws near, whatever The Holidays mean to you, you have the strength to endure. We all have our own paths to clear, and no one is better suited to clear yours than you. You can do it. You have done it before. Do not let society shame you into thinking you are not succeeding just because you don't fit the Hallmark picture of The Holidays. You are enough, you are loved. 💝
- this may surprise those that know me to be an atheist – our roads are long and winding, with many turns and stops [↩]