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Jingle
Jitters
I
started to write a Thanksgiving column, but then remembered
my own unpopular view that Thanksgiving is a time when the
women do all the cooking and cleaning and the men do all the
football-watching and snoozing.
So then I decided to do early holiday shopping online. Discounts,
free-shipping, mall-free spending all have their appeal and
I have resolved, as far as possible, to be a hermit-consumer
this year, avoiding the human crush of flesh in the field
of commerce.
Then I got discouraged looking for toys online. I don’t know
what little kids play with, anymore. Mine are all grown up.
For that matter, I’m not sure what they want, either.
So then I started in with game after game of Bubble-Breaker
on my phone. Trust me, this is a waste of time and I know
it. Am I depressed, I wondered? Only a depressive could subject
herself to 20 minutes of Bubble-Breaker.
That’s when I began to self-diagnose. And what I’ve come up
with is that I have a pretty advanced case of something I’m
calling Pre-Holiday Anticipatory Stress Trauma or PHAST.
PHAST because I feel the season descending like a rapidly
approaching freight train.
It wasn’t always like this for me. In fact, it’s never been
like this for me. In my small, extended family there has always
been a division of labor: we go to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving
and everybody comes to ours for Christmas. Since I’m a committed
list-maker, I’ve usually been able to get things done according
to some reasonable schedule that didn’t leave me feeling completely
sapped of strength and Christmas cheer.
Last year, though, things didn’t go according to plan. The
ice storm left us without heat or electricity for five days,
messing up my baking/wrapping/writing/prepping/shopping mojo.
Immediately following the holidays I resolved to be hyper-organized
this year in order to avoid the crushing exhaustion I felt
last year in the week after Christmas.
But as the time draws nearer, the sheer heavy lift of holiday
preparations seems overwhelming. And for the first time in
my life I understand how people can become depressed by all
that the season entails.
I think that mostly, when we think of someone having a “blue
Christmas,” we imagine a solitary person, abandoned by family
or friends through divorce, death or estrangement. The expectation
of the season is that those people with families will be happy
to be together, enjoying long-standing traditions.
Certainly in the case of my family, that has always been more
or less true. But as I think about it, it was more true when
the children in the family were younger.
As my sister’s kids grew and married and had children of their
own, holiday patterns began to change to accommodate differing
needs—Christmas spent with a spouse’s family means less of
a presence at our own family gathering, Thanksgivings split
between two houses means coordinating dinners so that the
young couple can take in both dinners and be with both families.
Well, it was one thing for me to watch that happening as my
sister’s kids grew. It didn’t really affect me much. But now
my daughters are well on their way to having their own lives—and
I have made significant personal and professional changes
in mine—so it throws expectations into a severe flux.
There are tensions about things that never caused tension
before: about the Christmas tree, about the Christmas cookies,
about wrapping presents, about the holiday cards, about who
will sleep where and when and who will visit whom and when.
There are occasional tears and slights and quarrels and I
end up feeling as though I’m both responsible for making everybody
happy and equally as baffled as to how.
I know—this is probably more than PHAST, it’s probably more
of the “I’m Going to Control This Show and You’ll Be Happy
with It” syndrome.
But in any case, it’s a very real, very heavy feeling.
Only—here’s the irony of it. For the 16 years I spent in parish
ministry I always stressed that these weeks in December were
a dark time of year, a time of meditative preparation, more
than manual preparation, for the upcoming, in-breaking light—whether
that light be the burning candles of the menorah, the star
of Bethlehem, or the equinox, signaling the coming lengthening
of days.
These weeks, I always said, mean the advent of in-breaking
light and so call us to sit still in the rich darkness to
await that light.
Well, so much for my own rhetoric. Because my own anticipatory
tetchiness, my PHAST, is in complete violation of what I say
I believe this time to be all about.
So, new problem: How to have stillness and family and celebration
and peacefulness without the concomitant emotional and physical
exhaustion?
Look, let me get back to you on that. I’m enough of a Pollyanna
to believe that a problem named is one step toward a problem
solved. PHAST is the problem. And since I can’t outrun that
freight train, I think I’d better come up with a strategy
to get off the railway tracks.
—Jo
Page
graepage@gmail.com
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