1st 39 years of my life Xmas eve was a big party, immediate family, cousins from town, various friends. Xmas morning was immediate family, even after I got married I was able to enjoy the morning until about ten AM.
Now, both parents are gone, siblings estranged. A few cousins will show up at my house and probably leave by 2 pm. Our friends have their own multi-layered families to visit. Then it’s just the wife and I until 10 AM Xmas morning when her family shows up.
I’m just not used to the new way of doing things. This is the new reality, things ain’t going back to how they used to be. I’m just really wallowing in the self-pity, I don’t want to but I don’t know what to do now. I can stay distracted by cleaning the house and preparing for guests and thankfully there is NFL on today.
I’m not enjoying this time of year and it’s not fair to me or my wife. I don’t want to go back to the way things used to be, I just want to be happy during this time of year. Problem is, I only really knew of one way to be happy during Xmas season and that ain’t coming back.
Anybody out there who’s been there that can reassure me that it will get better?
I’m in the same boat. Christmas is now just a chore instead of the wonderful day it used to be.
I haven’t hit on a solution yet, but I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I want to start a new tradition of maybe volunteering somewhere or something. That’s about the only thing I can come up with that might end up being as much fun as being with family used to be.
Either that or just ignore the day all together. That might work too.
Sorry I can’t really reassure you, but if it helps, you’re not alone.
It seems as though there is a major transition period that often must take place that is little discussed and little considered. Parents die, siblings have their own growing kids, folks may drift apart geographically. The holiday routines that we become so familiar with are adapted or abandoned completely, and we are often not prepared for it.
The best thing to do, I think, is to establish new routines and traditions, and come to grips with the fact that change is inevitable. Often easier said than done.
Diggerwam, I agree with the others - adjust your expectations for the day, make new traditions. I like the idea of finding somewhere to volunteer - that would be a bit of a reality check: many people don’t have homes or enough food or families, never mind the option for a traditional Christmas day.
Christmas day was a wonderful event when I was younger and closer (geographically) to family. I don’t have kids and my family’s scattered around the globe, so apart from emails and phone calls on the day, there’s nothing in the way of real celebration. I agree it’s sort of sad; I also feel nostalgic but it is what it is. A friend of mine in a similar situation and I have established a little tradition of doing a movie and a fancy dinner out on Christmas, this will be year three.
Talk to your wife, go through the ‘it would be neat if’ scenerios, consider what the next generation of your family might like as a tradition and make up your own. After two or three years you have a new thing going and it’s all yours.
Maybe surf the net looking for other people’s Christmas traditions and see if any strike your fancy.
There are times like this when I wish there was a place on the internet, like a board or something, where you could pose a question in the form of a message, and other people could give answers to that question. That would be great!
(ps: I’m not trying to be a dick, I am trying to be humorous. Looking at it I think it looks like I’m a dick but I’ll go with it. I’m in one of those moods.)
If the OP weren’t a man, I’d have sworn my mom registered as a Doper. I had a long conversation with her the other day about the salad days, when everyone, including several aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. would gather at her mother’s house complete with Christmas eve revelry and Christmas day dinner, all the kids playing with all their toys, grampa trying out his new snowblower, the teenagers hogging the stereo …
And now … well, it’s just me and my sister, and our respective kids. All my grandparents are gone. All my aunts, uncles and cousins live 1000’s of miles away and we can’t all travel there like we used to. Not to mention that I’m not married and my kids don’t live with me so logistical nightmares abound.
So it ends up just us at my sisters house, and I only show up on Christmas day only to turn around and split to get my kids back home.
My advice to my mom, and to the OP, is simple enough to spout, but hard enough to do – don’t live in the past. Memories of the past almost always trump current experiences. The past puts that varnish of amazingness on everything that just can never be matched again.
I think of it like this: sure the idyllic scene above is what everybody remembers; but no one remembers the time that my sister passed out for no reason and we spent Christmas eve in the ER; or when uncle Gary would get shit-faced every year and make an ass of himself; or when the little kids would break their new toys in the first half-hour and throw a fit.
I’m just saying … the past is in the past, where it belongs. Live today. Make new traditions if that’s your thing. But don’t try to recreate the past; it never works.
I have to preface this by saying that I really loathe this time of year (I lost both my parents around Christmastime and really don’t talk to the rest of my family any more). But nobody’s Christmas stays the same as it was - it is just part of being human. I am sure that your parents had to come up with new traditions as their parents and acquaintances passed away, as did mine. And now it is my turn to uphold that tradition (and reality) by inventing new traditions of my own. I don’t have a Christmas tree nor do I exchange a lot of gifts, but I volunteer at a halfway house to bring some Christmas to the residents there, a new “tradition” that suits me just fine in my current situation.
Change is inevitable, and you can either embrace it and reinvent it or let it depress you to the point where you make everybody around you miserable too.
Our traditions have involved whichever side of the family we visit that year. We haven’t put up a tree in over 9 years, and frankly, I don’t know why we keep our tree or the decorations. I should just give them all to our daughter.
This year will be somewhat sucky. My husband had spinal surgery last week, so he’s in no condition for the 2+ hour drive to my brother’s. He insisted I go - my daughter and I will ride up there together while my sweetie stays home and wallows in a John Wayne Marathon on TV. I hate leaving him alone and honestly, I don’t much look forward to going to my bro’s because of the long drive and the presence of one relative who I just can’t stand. Oh well. 'tis the season.
I’m thinking if our families were gone, we’d just spend the day like any other, and that would suit me fine. Christmas ceased being fun when our daughter no longer believed in Santa, and the last few years, it’s just been an annoyance. Yeah, I guess I’m a grinch.
I still try very hard to enjoy the Christmas season. I play a lot of holiday music starting after Thanksgiving because it gets me in the mood. We’ve simplified our decorations. Too much work to put up a tree and decorate it. So, I bought an 18 inch Ceramic Tree that lights up. Take it out of the box and you’re good. We also make a point to watch our favorite Christmas movies.
Anyone else cry more during Christmas season as you age?
Christmas is naturally the time to remember close relatives and seasons past. It’s bittersweet. The memories make me smile, but then I cry for the people that are gone. Which is ok, because its good to think of people you still love and cherish. Even when they’ve passed on.
I am almost nauseous, dreading Christmas day tomorrow. We are expected to drive over to my Mom’s and it’s going to be just her and a mentally ill brother. The brother’s 30 something son comes in from out of town and he is the only bright spot, and this year no one has heard from him and we don’t know how to contact him and don’t know if he’s even going to be there. Why is this important? Because my husband does NOT want to get off his ass, drive across town, and sit at my mother’s house with her and my brother - without the brother’s son to have a beer with, and talk to. I don’t know if he’ll even want to go with me and our daughter - he’d rather stay home. I’D rather stay home. We’d all like to stay home, play with our new Christmas toys, make cookies, try out the ice cream maker. But to Mom’s house - go we must, right? (She won’t come here. It has to be there. We HAVE to go through the motions with the diminished wreck of what family is left. Yes, I’m an ass, she won’t be around forever, 'tis the season, spread the joy, etc.) I am SO dreading tomorrow.
Something else we don’t remember is that as kids, we saw it as “grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins” while our parents saw it as “my parents, my siblings and our kids” and our grandparents saw it as “our kids and our grandchildren”. What really changes is our role- and it has to. As a teenager, I spent Christmas Eve with my aunts and uncles and cousins and that continued until after my kids were born. I have 7 first cousins who are between 8 and 18 years younger than me. When they married and started having kids, it became impossible to fit everyone in one place- 6 in my parents’ generation, 16 (including spouses/SOs) in mine and 19 in my kids’ generation (four of whom are actually adults and might bring an SO)
This is the most depressing time of the year for me. I have no family, no local friends. I spend every Christmas Eve & Christmas alone. I don’t decorate, there are no gifts to open. This year, since they fall on my regular days off work, I can’t even say it’s a day off work. Just a plain ol’ Saturday and Sunday.
I used to love the holidays. I couldn’t wait to decorate and wrap the gifts I had so carefully chosen. Now… I just wish it would go away.
I agree with the idea to consider trying to volunteer so you can bring some Christmas spirit to others. I’m certain there is a homeless shelter or nursing home in your community where you could find people who are having a lonely, crappy Christmas and would really welcome some cheerful kindness. Keeping busy will keep you from dwelling on the sad aspects and being useful to others will probably make you feel good.
Even if you just start a tradition of doing some anonymous act of kindness like the many “layaway angels” who have been anonymously paying off people’s KMart layaways this year it might be something that will help make this time of year something to be happy about instead of something to dread.
It can get better. First you have your wife, so you are not alone which is a great plus. Beyond that you have to believe that there is a place for you and her and you are able to find that place. Part of that may be asking, perhaps if you use facebook or have a way of reaching out to people you know, just do it and just go with whatever offers come up that you can get to and trust that even though they may not be directly related, there may be a ‘family like’ place for you already just you are not looking.
Diggerwam, like many other posters I’m sorry this is a hard time. It is a transition to a new part of your life and celebrating Christmas a new way will be part of it. Perhaps you can think during the next few days about the really specific things you miss about your traditional celebration - of course the people but also things like favorite foods, certain songs, movies, board games, jokes or anything else that makes Christmas “Christmas” to you. These are things that you can bring with you into the future and in so doing bring a piece of your past forward too.
Something that I think is hard for a lot of us to remember is that there isn’t a universal one right way to celebrate - be it Christmas or any other occasion - and what seems “right” is often just our best remembrances of what we ourselves have done in the past. So your new ways won’t be wrong, they’ll be new and hopefully eventually feel just right for you.
In my mother’s family (9 sibs) the tradition during my childhood was a huge family Thanksgiving at her parents’ house - 30 people all under one roof with a whole regimen including burnt rolls, card games and Baily’s Irish Cream (which no one liked except Grampa but all the adults would have a drink anyway). After Grampa died and Grama sold the house it went away for over a decade and the various nuclear units made our own traditions. This year one of my cousins decided she wanted her kids to experience the old Lane family Thanksgiving and spent 9 months cajoling a good portion of our aunts and uncles together for it. I didn’t go, but I talked to them all (28 of them!!!) on the phone and it’s clear they had a great time. It was at a different house in a different state, and lots of different people, even different food, but getting to be together again was by all accounts pretty great. Who knows if it will e the new tradition in my family, but my point is that gone is not forgotten and things can come back around again even long after they seem to be gone for good. It takes someone willing to step up and make it happen though, and the willingness to let some things go. In this case it was the ‘sleeping under one roof’ part which had been so important during my childhood. The aunt who hosted the meal has a big dining room and kitchen but only 2 spare bedrooms so of the 8 families who gathered 2 came from their nearby homes, 2 stayed with the meal hosts and the rest stayed in hotels and it was fine!
I wish you the best in finding new traditions in the future. For right now though, it’s totally ok to be sad during the holidays. There’s a lot of pressure to feel happy but you have a lot to be melancholy about and it’s not reasonable to expect to just throw that off. I hope you have some peace and a bit of pleasure in the loved ones you get to be with though.
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