I recently thought back to a Christmas season when we lived in Princeton, NJ, our home before Pittsburgh. One morning I was part of a small group of people waiting for the Princeton post office to open. We got to chatting as we waited and I said, half-joking, that I needed to mail my packages of Christmas presents to relieve my Christmas guilt. An awkward silence ensued. “Er, holiday guilt,” I corrected, thinking I hadn’t been inclusive and had offended people. But lately I’ve been wondering if maybe I misunderstood that silence. Maybe it was talking openly about the guilt I feel about Christmas that made people feel awkward, even though I softened the pointedness of my comment by making it sound like a joke.
This December I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas, the contrasting feelings it brings up for me, and how ambivalence is not included in the “Christmas spirit.” As I baked bread last weekend while playing Christmas Carols (I love Christmas Carols), it struck me that amid all the “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “Silver and Gold,” there’s an aspect of longing attached to Christmas that often doesn’t get talked about. Think of, “I’ll have a blue Christmas without you,” and how “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” ends, “…if only in my dreams.” “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…just like the ones I used to know,” sounds like a contemporary response to losses from climate change rather than a song composed by Irving Berlin in 1942. The classic American Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, revolves around dissuading the main character, George Bailey, from taking his own life. And of course Jesus is born in a manger, among straw and barnyard animals, because Joseph and Mary, his parents, couldn’t get a room in the nearby inn.
The story of Jesus’ birth highlights the importance of humility, but in America in 2022 Christmas gets presented as a time of always needing to do more, including socializing, eating and over imbibing (see The New York Times “Holiday Drinking Can Harm Your Heart”), and of course shopping and gift giving. That’s what caused my guilt—the feeling that whatever I did for Christmas, it would never be enough. The truth is that many people struggle emotionally over the December holidays, particularly with loneliness: “Why Do People Feel Lonely At Christmas? Here's What The Research Says.”
Mulling the contradiction between the grace of humility and the demands of excess, it occurred to me that what Christmas really represents for many of us is a form of emotional aspiration. We want to have only tidings of joy as we deck the halls, but life is rarely that simple.
Thinking over Christmases past, I realized I felt closest to achieving the idealized “Christmas spirit” during the four years in high school when I sang for the midnight mass service on Christmas Eve as a member of my church’s choir. The choir looked forward to, and prepared for, the Christmas Eve service for several months beforehand, practicing new music for mass, a special anthem, and several much-loved Christmas hymns. I could say that participating in a religious celebration is what felt so good to me, and the spiritual aspect was part of it, but much more was the joy I got from singing beautiful music with people I liked and the pleasure of being an integral part of a larger community.
Here’s another Christmas story that strikes me similarly, although the content couldn’t be more different. One December, when our son Conrad was five or six years-old, he asked me, “Are you and Dad Santa Claus?” I responded by first asking him if he wanted a truthful answer. He said yes, and I said yes, and then he went ahead as if he had never asked me the truth about Santa and I had never told him. It struck me that he wanted to believe in the idea of Santa—a jolly man who magically slides down chimneys and gives away toys. Well, who wouldn’t want to believe in that? Santa represents a wish, a hope, an emotional aspiration.
It would be hard to be purely happy for one full day, impossible for an entire month. And we don’t need to be—that’s what I’m trying to say in this post on holidays and emotional aspiration. Any of us will be lucky to have moments of deep satisfaction and comfort and joy during December, whatever holidays we celebrate.
Christmas carols make me happy. For someone else, lighting the first Hanukkah candle might feel uniquely special and another person might find the story of Kwanzaa nourishing to their soul. We wish people “Happy Holidays” to be inclusive, a goal I applaud, and that Kate Cohen recently wrote about very well in The Washington Post (read here). But another important goal is to put holiday striving and its accompanying guilt aside, and try to enjoy instead singular moments when the world looks a little brighter and our personal burdens, as a result, feel suddenly lighter.
Follow up to my last newsletter on the proliferation of for-profit hospices:
Colleague and friend Ira Byock wrote this excellent column for STAT called, “Hospice Care Needs Saving.”
ProPublica published a response to their initial column—legislators want to put some limits on for-profit hospices, which would be a good start:“Congress and Industry Leaders Call for Crackdown on Hospice Fraud”
However you celebrate this month I hope there are some lovely moments. I feel for you if the holidays tend to be lonely.
My warmest wishes for 2023—and hugs,
Theresa
I love that mouse so much! I went off-script during the holidays a long time ago. I am aware that some folks judge that, or feel sorry for me. It bothers me a little, but not enough to go to the mall.
Thank you for that. It was so insightful and true. Ever since my AML leukemia and bone marrow transplant, I realize how important it is to just feel the spirit of the season and gather with friends and family. Everyone needs the space to feel the peace and blessings of this season. I have slowed down and do the Christmas things I love at a leisurely pace. We now spread out what we do all through December. My son and daughter-in-law, a doctor and nurse midwife respectively will be working Christmas so last weekend we were all together at a restaurant. No one had to feel guilty about how they entertained. All 17 of us had a wonderful time just enjoying each other's company.