Searching (and failing) for Christmas Spirit this year…
December 4, 2009Warning: This is a grumpy, whiny, self-pitying post. Move on to greener pastures here if you aren’t interested.
Most years I love Christmas time. I love decorating the house, putting candles in the windows, making cookies with my mother, preparing Christmas cards and sending them to 60+ family, friends and coworkers, selecting and buying presents, wrapping and finally giving presents, cutting down a tree with my family and decorating it, holiday parties, and holiday food and most importantly, spending time with family and friends. Generally everyone is in a good mood for the entire month. People are more generous and friendly, everyone smiles and wishes you a Merry Christmas. Kids are excited and happy, in my little world, Christmas time is a great time of year.
Except this year. This year it sucks. I haven’t been able to drum up even an ounce of excitement for this huge holiday looming in front of me. I don’t want to see any Christmas lights on houses because it just mocks the fact that I can’t have any lights in my rental house this year. The same with decorations. I don’t have a single Christmas decoration up in my house – not one. They’re packed away in boxes, buried under mounds of stuff. I feel like I’m completely failing my kids in the decorating department. It makes me want to cry whenever I think about it. We’ve figured out most of what we need to buy for Christmas this year, but we haven’t figured out where we’re going to come up with the cash to pay for them. And, even when we do finally buy the gifts, the presents under the tree are going to be sparse this year, and even though our kids are too young to notice, Zach and I know that, and want to be able to give them more…
I’m so stressed about money (or lack thereof) and about our house sale/purchase (eventually…) that I’ve mostly stopped sleeping. Even though my children are finally sleeping well, I’m awake at ridiculous hours of the night fretting and worrying about everything that we’re precariously balancing at the moment. So not only am I grumpy about Christmas, I’m just tired in general which just makes it harder for me to hide my grumpiness.
I have to miss one of the holiday parties this year – with 2 little kids it’s just too much to chase them around an office party. I had small hopes that perhaps the party would be at our house, which would have eliminated that difficulty, but it’s not. So, Zach will go to the party, and I’ll stay home with the boys. The holiday party for my office is new, different, and I’m not sure what to expect (besides having to come back to work for 2 hours after the party – the day before the holiday break…)
After sick kids and broken vehicles and (someday) closing on our house, I won’t have enough vacation days to take the whole week of Christmas off. So while everyone else is home and the office is empty, I’ll be working.
I’m going through the motions, but I’m not excited about any of it this year. I’ve mentioned this a few times, hoping someone might be able to help me find some Christmas spirit, to help me put some real joy back into the season, but I’ve come up empty. We’re in a strange house that I can’t decorate, and we don’t have any money. I don’t want to do Christmas. If we didn’t have kids, I’d beg Zach to just skip it. But we do have kids, so I’m forcing myself through the motions, but I’m miserable doing it. I’ve turned into one of those people who hates the holidays, and I hate that about myself.
Sara, I’ve been a faithful reader of yours for almost 3 years now. I found your blog when I was expecting my first son, and now I have an almost 3-year-old and a 10-month-old little boy, so I love reading about our sort of parallel lives. Unfortunately, our Christmas experiences this year are also sort of parallel. We’re trying to sell our house because the repairs on it are sinking us financially, and in the meantime, we’re just scraping by. I don’t even know if that’s accurate, we’re kind of NOT even scraping by since we’re having to borrow from our future tax return money to pay for things for the boys from Santa this year. Everything under the tree will be for them, and it won’t be much. But I am singing Christmas songs with them, decorating with the old ornaments and lights we dug up, coloring Christmas pictures to hang, and reading all the Christmas library books we can find. This will be our youngest’s first Christmas, and I just won’t let a lack of money ruin it. We’re aiming to have 3-5 decent toys under the tree for each of them, as well as a delicious Christmas meal. While it can be disheartening because we’d love to be able to do more for them and our families, I try to remember that it won’t always be like this. And I keep telling myself that although we may not be rich right now, we’re rich in love. Somehow it’s getting me through — I think about how much I wanted a child just three Christmases ago, and here I am blessed with two extraordinary little boys. Anyway, just wanted to write because I often read your blog because it makes me feel good to know that some other mom out there is going through the same things I am — so maybe it can help you a little to know you’re not alone. Sending you all my warmest Christmas thoughts…may they rub off! Heddie
Hi Heddie – it is comforting to know that I’m not the only one in this rather depressing boat this year. I like the idea of coloring Christmas pictures to hang (Xander just drew some rather interesting pictures of Santa the other day…) And library Christmas books are also a great idea. I think we’ll be in the 3-5 Christmas presents a piece (plus stockings) boat, and I keep telling myself that they’re too young to have much interest in expensive gifts, so we can save some money that way… And you are of course correct that really what counts is two amazing, healthy, happy and adorable children to celebrate with. It’s so hard to put the every day stresses of life aside and just enjoy the time, but we’ll do it because our kids need us to, right? And maybe somewhere along the way we’ll stumble upon a little leftover Christmas spirit… Merry Christmas to you and yours as well – thanks for reading!