It is that time of year again! Christmas! Christmas is hard! I hope it's not just me, but as time has passed, Christmas just gets more stressful and often less enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, having Christmas with my daughter makes up for all of that but I'm just being real. Christmas is intense.
Before baby, Christmas was split into 5 different houses for all the different relatives and the only driving force behind it all was the food. Now that we have a life and home of our own, it's more driven by gift giving. It is literally my dream to only buy stuff for the kid one year, not a single other person, and then be rewarded with an open ended nap and Christmas movies. Every time I mention this, my husband thinks it's a trap, but the debt of the gift giving and the months of tears when the credit card statements roll in, I sure would love a year without that.
Many people have a hard time with Christmas because they have lost loved ones, and those have always been the ones I tend to hug the most and try to spoil in some way, shape or form. I miss the days of true giving and gifting. Occasionally I find someone who does this effortlessly. They will find you the perfect something, something you would never think of for yourself, and it just warms your heart that you were even thought of. These are the people who make me fall back in love with the season.
I had epic Christmases as a kid. Even when my world was upside down I always got amazing things and I can't remember a "bad Christmas." I was a late bloomer and collected toys well into my teen years. It wasn't until my life took on gypsy status that things got lost along the way. I kept everything and loved my toys to death. When I was 18, I was like Buddy the Elf. Making cookies, buying people perfect things, working extra shifts to get wonderful presents for all, and it was completely worth it. But as adulthood became more intense, it lost some of its magic. The tree took longer to decorate than I remembered and it was exhausting finding the time. The list of whom to buy for got longer and longer and you didn't want to be the cheap one suggesting Secret Santa. Squeezing in family time was daunting, especially with added travel.
We had a couple good years with my Uncles before everyone had kids on their hips where we painted cookies and still got the coolest gifts on the planet, before things took a sharp turn. I had one Christmas where I was super pregnant, and while cool gifts ended up under the tree, all I wanted was a quiet day. We definitely had it, but that Christmas was so bittersweet. My daughter's 1st Christmas when she was 11 months old, it was actually cold and she slept for the longest stint we had ever experienced in her crib. I woke up panicked, not used to that much solid sleep time. We all had a good Christmas nap that day.
We still haven't had a "bad Christmas." I few years ago my sister and brother-in-law came down and it was everything I wanted it to be and more. Family time, but at my house. I didn't have to travel. I had to kick back and hostess. That, I could handle. Last year we bought a house so that was exciting but we had some job change stuff that distracted me and my mom was living with us and she narrated the gift exchanges. That, I could not handle.
So now we have this year. Usually my spirits are up for this holiday as soon as Thanksgiving passes. I mean, Hanson even released a new Christmas album this year! But this year I felt sad. As someone with Depression and Anxiety, sure, the seasonal stuff can bring up a lot of emotions but I felt so blah. I had found amazing things as gifts for my husband and asked specifically for only projects on the house to be done, not to be bought things. He rolled his eyes but I just felt so uncomfortable having money spent on me. I'd let myself go on being the "controller of the fun" this year and we had racked up a bit of debt. Nothing scary, but I was upset that I hadn't been more tenacious and now with the holidays looming I just felt so heavy about it all.
I knew my husband would think it was a trap. I really would have preferred that neither of us received a single thing besides ornaments (a fun tradition) but then I found the perfect gift and just had to. See my husband's birthday is in December and always gets lumped in with Christmas. He hates this and every year it is my mission to undo the wounds of his childhood and make it epic. I did what I could this year and plotted a lot but it was scaled down a bit. The big Christmas present was my hope and dream to make his life exciting again! But I didn't want stuff. I'm over stuff.
I needed a new bra or two. My purse and wallet are shedding and falling apart so that would be okay. I was running low on makeup. But I wanted a functional garage and clean grout. I wanted an organized closet and scoured bathroom. I wanted mimosas and a nap. I wanted a yard I didn't hate and a reorganized kitchen. I wanted to feel some peace, you know, like in the songs.
This was a busy season for us. We had 5 parties booked, and only one would my husband be attending. There was no time for a Disney trip this year, each weekend from December 1st on was filled with fun. But I also had other duties. I tried to shop early with my mom and just hated it. The stores annoyed me and I knew my daughter would receive a million things from everyone else so I stuck with just a few things I thought she'd really love. I wouldn't say I was being a Grinch, I just lacked my usual cheer.
One party weekend in particular we had a going away party, a Christmas party with mostly adults and then our Church Party. The Church Party I was excited for but it was far away and involved a White Elephant Gift. I found a cute traveler tumbler and put it in a bag and called it good. There were far more people at this event than I'd anticipated and getting around with the little one was tough at times but I was surrounded by my favorite friends. The gift exchange was between about 60 people. I was exhausted just thinking about it.
Most of the gifts were generic: candle holders, candles, nail polish, decorative things. The old ladies went after Snow Men that held tea lights and calendars, planner books, towel sets, etc. I was number 54 out of 60 and had seriously low expectations. While my daughter was happily watching The Polar Express by the fire on the porch on the big screen, I was commenting with church friends how ridiculous it all was. We were joking about stealing a puzzle or a hot chocolate set, people were fighting over "hot ticket items" and I rolled my eyes. The number before me was called and it was an older member of our church whom I'd met and hugged and shook hands with too many times to not feel horribly I always forgot his name. He picked a bag with a Buddy the Elf mug with hot cocoa mix.
"That is amazing and I need it!," I almost screamed. I told everyone it must be mine. That was my single, favorite Christmas movie and a coffee mug? I always needed more of those, no matter what my husband said! This was the first time this season I was excited. I thought, "See, this is why it is important for you to be social and do things you are hesitant about because cool things happen!" No one else seemed to care about the mug so I White Elephant "stole" it and was ecstatic.
I felt like I was in that Office Episode where the iPod was being fought over but I just wanted the tea pot like Dwight. I knew that was a real gift, haha! I laughed and those who knew me well, were laughing with me and a bit at me. I thought, "Okay, money well spent. I got something nice for someone and got back something of equal value! Score." And then the White Elephant mugging happened. He took it back.
I mean, I had it coming right? I stole it, he stole it back. But now it was frozen. You couldn't take it anymore. I sucked it up but damn, that was crappy! I went back to find another gift and ended up with a knock off M&M Dollar Tree Candy Cane. This made me happy because the whole sermon revolved around the ridiculousness of this candy cane and how much kids love it. I knew my daughter would love it but I ended up leaving exhausted and defeated for the long drive home. He didn't even know or care who Buddy the Elf was! Gosh!
There was a huge part of me throwing an internal tantrum and I couldn't figure out why. It was dumb right? It was a stupid mug. But then I realized that the mug was the epitome of my Christmas funk. My Grinch came out and all I could think was, "THE AUDACITY!" For a moment it wasn't just a mug, it was some kind of symbol of Christmas cheer! It was being excited about something silly and seemingly insignificant just because it reminded me of Christmas and the spirit of the holiday and the fact that I could recite most of that film by heart. The bratty preacher's kid came out in me as I rationalized, well, "God just didn't want me to have that mug. It wasn't meant to be."
I whined about the loss for two days and gave up. In this week I went Christmas shopping and had a completely meltdown about money. I got frustrated at the mall because nothing seemed quite right for shopping for people. I felt defeated and lonely at home because it was a really erratic week and we had a sick dog leaving messes everywhere and a new alarm system working against me. I was more and more down and out about this holiday until Saturday morning when my sister sent my daughter a Buddy the Elf talking ornament. Then we had the Christmas parade, which was mostly fun, and then another Christmas party I was hesitant about but pushed through. Saturday night I got the kid to bed and started doing all the random things, I painted a new table for her room that we needed for new toys arriving. I fixed a cabinet I'd been meaning to. I wrapped more gifts and cleaned up. I sorted parade candy and beads.I stayed up too late and kicked butt!
The next morning I was stressed. My husband was drumming in church and getting us all out of the house any kind of early is so overwhelming and difficult. We made it on time for once and I'd gotten my daughter set up in Sunday school when a close friend came up to me with a small gift. I didn't want to open it until Christmas but she insisted. It was a pair of pug socks with Santa hats. This gift was amazing for 3 reasons: 1. Our pug just turned 7 and in some senior moment ate a bunch of gross things from my bathroom trash and spent 3 days puking and pooping all over my home and mostly on my daughter's bed. 2. My mom always got me ridiculous socks and complained about how horrible my socks were, (well take that mom, I have cool socks now!). 3. It was small, thoughtful, relevant, and what the meaning of Christmas is supposed to be; a small little something that says, "Thought of you, Merry Christmas, you're not so bad!"
It was as I was feeling this sense of calm, this excitement that Christmas eve was a week away and things were stressful but we'd be okay that the older gentleman's wife handed me a plastic bag. "Did you want this?," she asked. "We won't use it, we don't need it and it seemed like you wanted it." It was the mug. The Buddy The Elf mug came back to me. The next morning I used that mug with my coffee and felt calm.
I will not lie, my week has gotten mountains worse, but I am holding this dear to my heart as that "Thrill of Hope," my pastor keeps talking about. Life is hard, Christmas is hard but we just have to stay hopeful, because there are socks and mugs out there that will make you remember the whole point of what this season is about. And it's not about the gifts. It's about the thoughts and the moments. So have a Merry Christmas all, and remember that your one little thought can get someone out of their Christmas Funk. You can easily turn a Grinch into a Buddy the Elf with a little Christmas cheer!
