The Elusive Spirit of Christmas

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The stress I put myself under,  trying to achieve the perfect holiday is a tradition in itself .  It comes from a well-meaning place—I really want to show my love by doing special things, buying special gifts.  In fact, I want you to be so fucking happy that I eventually feel validated--as a woman, mother and human being.

That’s a lot of pressure to feel, much less project onto others. 

“Will she like this?”

“I hope I don’t hurt his feelings.”

“Did I make enough food?”

“What if someone isn’t gleeful (and showing it)?”

My poor kids!  All that mismatched energy blasted at them, twisting their stomachs, just like mine did as a child.   Nothing rings Christmas bells louder than high anxiety and IBS.

In my house growing up, opening gifts was a performance.  If you had a gift, all eyes were on you.  How you reacted to that gift was a math equation.  My mom's facial expression equaled our enthusiasm divided by the number of seconds it took us to scream.  With each gift, we kids knew we had to run up and give wild thank you kisses.   It was my job, when I got older to sneakily orchestrate the number of gifts my parents were giving each other.  I knew the angel on the treetop would swan dive to its bloody death if my mom had more packages to open than my dad.

I think I was always secretly praying for something to go wrong, just to release some Christmas tension!

My favorite holiday memories were when things didn’t go so perfectly:

    Mom’s sour face when she hit a wrong note on the piano playing Christmas songs; my dad tripping, trying to get into a picture before the polaroid timer went off.  The time the turkey exploded.  The Year of the Chicken…pox.

in In fact, the times where things went pretty darn-near flawlessly felt so wrong.  We had to be so careful not to spill, to smooth our dresses, to buy drip-less candles.  High standards are wonderful, but humans are human. 

The true meaning of the season is love.  I’m so grateful and lucky to have my family and friends still want to hang out with me occasionally, despite me pressuring them to have a Merry Christmas, damn-it!

PS:  My sugar cookies, this year, look like freight-train graffiti. 

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