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The following is a public service announcement for the tender-hearted, the gentle, those who hold fond memories of childhood Christmases or Hanukahs or Kwanzaas or whatever; those who hearts leap at the first sound of "Jingle Bells" played over the mall loudspeakers at Labor Day; the people who pitied Tiny Tim.
To all of you out there who can't stand to hear anyone say anything bad about Christmas, turn away now. This is going to be ugly.

Soon the holidays will be upon us again. I used to like the holiday season a lot, but now I'm not so sure I do. I like my days and weeks and months to be even, without a lot of big ups and downs. The holidays are nothing if not a quick succession of ups and downs. The stress of buying gifts, visiting family, the sometimes forced cheerfulness, can be very tiring. Then, when it's all over, you're left with an empty feeling. Welcome to the new year--another 360-day grind until next Christmas!
My idea of a holiday is a day where I get to relax. Unfortunately, I can rarely relax unless I'm alone. So when I go to Christmas parties, Thanksgiving dinners, things like that, I feel guilty for not having a good time! I'm supposed to feel good; it's Christmas, isn't it? Once I get the guilt cycle going, I feel even worse, which just makes me feel more guilty, and so on and so on until I wish it were the middle of August or something.
How about Christmas cards? What a joke. If you don't stay in touch with someone over the year, it's a good sign that you don't want to talk to them. Not that you don't care, but perhaps you don't have anything to say. But you send them anyway, along with a note or a letter that talks very chirpily about how well everything is going, or at least how well everyone is bucking up under the strain of the unnamed but already known struggles. There's just no way someone would ever be honest and say, "Dear So-and-so, this year sucked tremendously. My wife left me, two years ago, and I'm still not feeling terribly wonderful about it. I go to work, I come home, I write or I sit and suck my thumb. Not much to say there. Oh, yeah, I got hospitalized, and there's no way I'll pay all the bills this century. And I had to buy a new car because the old one died, so now I don't have any money. On the bright side, I haven't extricated myself from my old dead-end job, and I'm not trying all that hard to do so. Best to the family."
Maybe I sound bitter and not terribly much fun, but this is the honest truth. If there were no holidays, then I could live one day at a time, in a routine which comforts me. I can live with the annual reminders that I'm a loner in s social society. Holidays are for society, not for individuals. They're for reinforcing traditions. That's fine, but I have my own traditions. I am an outsider. I find joy in those personal holidays when I can truly celebrate. Pacificon, Dundracon, my annual vacations. Days when I can just sit home and play video games without a care in the world. Those are the days that bring back my soul. Mornings spent walking a wilderness trail with a dear friend. Not the days we eat the turkey or pass out the gifts. Mainly, I feel worse on those days.
Last year, on New Year's Eve, I was so filled with the spirit of the holidays, I drank myself silly. I just sat there on a friend's patio, drinking one shot after another, trying to erase those parts of my brain that remembered 1996. The joy and warmth of the holidays brought me so much happiness, it was all I could do not to weep. And then, on the way home, I puked all over the back seat of my car, and thereby cleansed myself of all holiday spirits, liquid or otherwise. And funny, I felt much better.
I'm hoping the holidays are a little less uplifting this time around. I'd hate to leave a mess in my new car.

All contents of Skaldheim (C) 2001 by Jefferson Krogh.
URL: http://skaldheim.com/musings/growls/growl1.html
Revised: August 9, 2001.