I put up my Christmas decorations yesterday and today. It was more of a struggle this year than it has been in previous years and as I sat in my darkened living room looking at my garland-strewn mantle and singular stocking, I think I’ve finally put my finger on why. Of all the holidays, Christmas is the one that I’ve previously enjoyed the most and so I wanted to sit down and think about why it just doesn’t “do it for me” anymore over the past year or two like it has in the past. The short answer? I think it’s some deep-seated loneliness and the loss of in-person, social relationships and family. I know that there’s almost as many reasons why people hate the holidays as there are people that hate them, but for me it has all kind of coalesced into feelings of loneliness and loss that has me quietly muttering bah, humbug, under my breath.
I don’t think I realized how much the pandemic lockdowns literally changed my life and (I believe) my personality; prior to 2020, I was out and about and pretty active far more than I was at home, even after I bought my house. Then the lockdowns happened and for 2 years we were all pretty much stuck inside or at least in our own local areas - travel was too much of a risk, as was getting any elder family members sick. The funny thing was that at one point in the lockdowns I was climbing the walls to get out and get back to “normal” life but by the time they ended, a fundamental shift had occurred in my mental state and I had become much more introverted and more of a homebody. It was like I had seen too much, learned too much about how broken the world is, and once I was given the all-clear to return to that “normal” life, I had lost the ability and desire to maintain in-person social connections, even though I desperately wanted them.
The thing I realized today is that the Holidays are all about doing those activities and things with other people (or at least, that should be the primary concern), and I’ve lost so many of my physical connections that I found myself asking who are you doing this for, anyway? Ever since I moved away from home over 20 years ago, I’ve never really decorated my house much (certainly not on the inside). It never made much sense to me to put up a tree, stockings, etc. inside when I wasn’t going to be there to use them on Christmas day because I always traveled home to be with friends and family there. I would put up minimal lighting outside (wrapped my porch railings, wrapped my trees and bushes once I got a house, put a wreath on the front door), but that was pretty much it.
When I was a kid, there wasn’t such a thing as Black Friday — it was “Christmas decoration weekend” culminating in the family skipping church on that Sunday night (gasp! Oh, the horror, you heathens!) to decorate the family Christmas tree. There were many times while I was living at home that I would steal away from the rest of the family and just go sit in the living room and gaze at the beautiful tree and bask in the warmth and comfort of that special time. As I got older, the family computer was in the living room, so I would enjoy listening to Christmas music being surrounded by that scene — bonus if the snow had already come to enhance the scene out the window! But it was really all about the communal family history that was represented on that tree through the ornaments that various family members had collected (or made) over the years.
And then when I moved away as a young adult, it was always about returning home to catch up with extended family and other friends who had “achieved escape velocity” from home and see what they had been up to and how exciting their lives were (and, of course, to brag about how exciting my life was). I always felt like a rock star during those early years, because I lived in “the big city” and was doing crazy computer things for a company that was a household name. I would leave the week of Christmas and not come back until after the New Year, so what was the point of decorating at home when I was going to be gone for the last half of the month?
And yes, I’m one of those that refuses to put up a single decoration or listen to a note of a Christmas song until after Thanksgiving has come and gone.
Since 2020, I’ve lost a lot of people from my IRL life — both of my parents are now gone and all but maybe 2 or 3 friends have moved away from “home”. My dad’s partner is thinking of moving down here to this state (which seems crazy but whatever), and so there’s now even less reason to go home. Many of my friends that I made here have moved away too, or have gotten married and started families and have their own holiday plans and goals. I’ve had heretofore irreconcilable differences with the American Church, so I stopped going 3 years ago and almost all of those para-social relationships went away too (which is a topic for a whole ‘nother essay, I tell you whut). Since I never married and have no children, there’s nobody to share the wonder and excitement of the holidays with, or to drive the decisions to capture that spirit through decoration; it just seems like so much work to do just for me, myself, and I.
I fully recognize that a lot of this is my own responsibility because I do not do very well at maintaining relationships unless I am prompted to do so by some sort of social pressure (usually through participation in some para-social organization like church or work or volunteering or something), so the fact that I lost a lot of those relationships is kinda squarely on my shoulders. I certainly can’t fault others for doing what they need to do and living their lives, which oftentimes involves moving away. And, I haven’t done enough work of my own to get out there and replace those physical relationships I lost. When I lost my job 2+ years ago, I basically turned to my online communities almost exclusively (the ultimate para-social network) and didn’t do the hard IRL work to find and maintain new friendships in my new state of being.
Anyway…
I write all that to say this: after all this time, I finally understand what it’s like to at the very least be nonplussed by the Holidays, if not filled with outright hatred for them because they really only work if one has good mutual relationships with people that are important to them. Otherwise, they can feel pretty exclusionary and engender a why bother? attitude that turns a lot of people off and, at worst, amplifies their reasons for disliking the holiday in question. Those days become just like any other day with nothing special about them, except that stores are closed and everybody else is off work but busy with their own things. Now that I’m on the other side of 50 years old, in a time of life when I’m losing more friends and family than I’m gaining, I can see it for the first time whereas it never really occurred to me before.
When one is a kid, it’s all about the wonder and spirit of the season, being on the “nice list” so Santa will bring you what you want, and (let’s face it) the unbridled avarice of acquiring enough toys and baubles to keep you interested until your next big gift-receiving event (usually one’s birthday). It’s all about receiving when you’re a kid. But when one is an adult with the experience and scars of life under their belt, all that gift-giving and optimism can heighten the sense of all the things that one has lost (or never had to begin with) when there’s nobody to either give gifts to or receive them from, and that can make the Holidays more painful than wonderful for a lot of people.
So, now that I have a house (and have had one for quite some time), I could get a tree, ornaments, and other decorations and “deck the halls” as it were. I’m pretty sure my dad’s partner still has my mom’s boxes and boxes of ornaments and stuff which I could probably get. But who would I be decorating for? It seems like a whole lot of work to do that just for myself because few (if any) people would see it (and putting a decorated tree in a window where people outside could see it would involve a lot of furniture rearranging, not the least of which would likely by my home office from whence I’m typing this post right now). Why bother to spend all that work by myself to just decorate for myself? Without those decorations — and the simple but important act of sharing them with others — the magic really is well and truly gone for me. Decorations aren’t just for “me”, they’re for “us”. Hard to do when there’s not really an “us” to sit with and gaze in wonder at our handiwork.
Bah, humbug indeed.
