As I type this I’m sitting in a San Francisco cafe with campy Christmas music on blast. Fresh off the presses is national news about people who recently resorted to fisticuffs over flat screen TVs, and one woman even got tased in a mall.
It may be “the most wonderful” time of the year, but in some ways it’s also the most bizarre.
Please don’t get me wrong – I actually happen to love christmas. I’ve been collecting ornaments for almost 20 years, and every December I decorate my house with an earnest amount of festive-spirit. I do NOT mean to be a Grinch here, but I also recognize that this is a hard time of year for many people, and I believe that it’s more than worthy of its fair share of cultural criticism.
One of the problems that I have with this season, to be blunt, is the pressure that it puts on many people to pretend like they woke up with holly between their ears. Sometimes life is hard, for all of us – but for those of us who happen to be suffering during the month of December there seems to be a manic pressure to pretend like it’s not happening.
Meanwhile, to suffer while the world bellows “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” usually only makes a person feel worse (more alienated, more discordant with one’s surroundings), so there’s a one-two punch: The festiveness of the holidays makes us feel ironically sadder than we already do, and then we feel pressured to pretend like it’s not happening. It’s all so unfortunate and unnecessary.
If what I’m describing applies to you this year, I have a suggestion. It comes with no bells or whistles, and it doesn’t require any additional equipment. You can do it right here, right now, at this simple invitation:
Lay your burden down.
Stop pretending that your feelings aren’t happening. Stop pretending that your grief doesn’t exist. It’s OK that you miss him, and it’s OK that you’re angry at her. I know that it hurts, but pretending that it doesn’t won’t make it go away.
Find someone that you trust, and talk about it. You don’t need to carry this alone.
After you have a good cry, try to find a sense of humor in it all – the irony of having to plaster a smile on your face while you bake sugar cookies for the PTA (even if that’s just metaphorically-speaking). Let it all out. Cry while you laugh, laugh while you cry, pick yourself up, and move on.
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I know that it’s not the magical solution that we often wish we had, but sometimes the most effective solutions are the simplest – and, sadly, it never serves us to deny the truth.