How do you feel about the holidays?

[RemyZee]

I used to adore the holidays as a kid, and when I could celebrate with other people, but doing it alone and doing blue collar work makes the holiday season seem tragic, expensive (you don't get paid for the full shift even if you get the days off, so December, the month you have the most expenses, you have the least pay) and isolating. I don't like driving to visit my parents. They're lovely but every time they bring up church or politics. Glad to be a grownup but I miss the innocence of childhood. I love the idea of Christmas though.

This will be my first Christmas since I found out something. I look different. My shirts don't fit anymore. My brother asked me why my hair was so much longer, and he knows damn well about the medication. It was never about being liked. When they like you if you're depressed and miserable and playing their role of suffering relative, they like you conditionally. Being healthy has been a slap in their collective faces.

I cannot love the inherent inauthenticity of spending the social, family, and religious side of the holiday trying to look as butch as possible to avoid Those Conversations. I have to be seen: "accoutred like young men. . . .
And wear my dagger with the braver grace,
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride, and speak of frays
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies,"

that when Christmastide is over I shall have to lie in bed at night thinking of it as something that has happened to someone else, and hope 2026 is better, just like I've hoped for better results every Christmas since 2015.

You wake up early , pad barefoot on cold floor to the cramped parlor of your apartment, and put on the gramophone record of Adeste Fideles. Wake up your roommate, trip over the cat and go sprawling on the floor, singing half forgotten songs, cursing at the mirror through a mouthful of toothpaste foam with a shirt and a necktie and a sports bra fighting it out for the home stretch on your shoulders, cut yourself shaving, light the string of bulbs on the little tree you put up at the last minute, telephone everyone for the whole afternoon, hurry hurry hurry into your winter coat and go out and crank the car so we all go to midnight Mass and stand in a room full of people, some slightly intoxicated, and we'll all raise our voices in the same song of the angels to those midnight shepherds knowing damn well they'll spend the other 364 days of the year shunning you, speaking negatively behind you, refusing to hire you, actively voting for you to have less rights, standing up for institutions over experience, and if you end up dead by accident during the year, they'll have the decency to bury you under a name that is no longer your own. One remains acutely conscious of this especially if one, like me, is rather ugly and shy in public places.

I think I would rather sit somewhere with a cup of tea and one of the cats in my lap and rest til I think about nothing at all.

Childhood innocence and time to spend with people you love, with the idea that they actually do love you no matter what and you love them as well, is nice. Its absence leaves a vacuum.

I like your writing!

 

[RemyZee]

I used to adore the holidays as a kid, and when I could celebrate with other people, but doing it alone and doing blue collar work makes the holiday season seem tragic, expensive (you don't get paid for the full shift even if you get the days off, so December, the month you have the most expenses, you have the least pay) and isolating. I don't like driving to visit my parents. They're lovely but every time they bring up church or politics. Glad to be a grownup but I miss the innocence of childhood. I love the idea of Christmas though.

This will be my first Christmas since I found out something. I look different. My shirts don't fit anymore. My brother asked me why my hair was so much longer, and he knows damn well about the medication. It was never about being liked. When they like you if you're depressed and miserable and playing their role of suffering relative, they like you conditionally. Being healthy has been a slap in their collective faces.

I cannot love the inherent inauthenticity of spending the social, family, and religious side of the holiday trying to look as butch as possible to avoid Those Conversations. I have to be seen: "accoutred like young men. . . .
And wear my dagger with the braver grace,
And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice, and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride, and speak of frays
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies,"

that when Christmastide is over I shall have to lie in bed at night thinking of it as something that has happened to someone else, and hope 2026 is better, just like I've hoped for better results every Christmas since 2015.

You wake up early , pad barefoot on cold floor to the cramped parlor of your apartment, and put on the gramophone record of Adeste Fideles. Wake up your roommate, trip over the cat and go sprawling on the floor, singing half forgotten songs, cursing at the mirror through a mouthful of toothpaste foam with a shirt and a necktie and a sports bra fighting it out for the home stretch on your shoulders, cut yourself shaving, light the string of bulbs on the little tree you put up at the last minute, telephone everyone for the whole afternoon, hurry hurry hurry into your winter coat and go out and crank the car so we all go to midnight Mass and stand in a room full of people, some slightly intoxicated, and we'll all raise our voices in the same song of the angels to those midnight shepherds knowing damn well they'll spend the other 364 days of the year shunning you, speaking negatively behind you, refusing to hire you, actively voting for you to have less rights, standing up for institutions over experience, and if you end up dead by accident during the year, they'll have the decency to bury you under a name that is no longer your own. One remains acutely conscious of this especially if one, like me, is rather ugly and shy in public places.

I think I would rather sit somewhere with a cup of tea and one of the cats in my lap and rest til I think about nothing at all.

Childhood innocence and time to spend with people you love, with the idea that they actually do love you no matter what and you love them as well, is nice. Its absence leaves a vacuum.

I like your writing! Thanks for this.

Man, that's a chance to feel alive. I'm salivating over having a day like that soon because I'm going to walk 25 km in it. True north strong and free, baby.

 

[SusanLR]

It was always a happy time for me until my parents passed in 2013.
Just the three of us and a couple of friends nearby that felt like extended family.
The cooking all day with my mom, the meal, giving each other gifts, and I loved the decorating and lights.
Now there is no one left and my house partner just cusses and makes fun of people who decorate.
Takes the joy away. But I have memories left and I can still feel the closeness of those years when we were together.

 

[if6wasnin9]

You're expected to be happy and that's too much pressure. I hear Xmas music in strip malls and on the radio and it's too commercialized.

 

[Shamar]

You're expected to be happy and that's too much pressure. I hear Xmas music in strip malls and on the radio and it's too commercialized.

I have no problem with the traditional religious music (except that it is incessantly shoved at you), but it is the secular music I can't stand. It is all about togetherness, joy, socializing, and love, none of which I can have (as most of you are aware). I consider it a mocking slap to the face. In fact, my user name, Shamar (a Turkish word meaning a slap on the face), was significantly inspired by this season. Holly Jolly Christmas almost makes me vomit.

 

[RemyZee]

You're expected to be happy and that's too much pressure. I hear Xmas music in strip malls and on the radio and it's too commercialized.

I know what you mean about the music--especially when they bring out the chipmunks. Warning: this clip might induce seizures. (kidding)

 

[Shamar]

I know what you mean about the music--especially when they bring out the chipmunks. Warning: this clip might induce seizures. (kidding)

Maybe not seizures, but almost certainly vomiting

 

[RemyZee]

You're expected to be happy and that's too much pressure. I hear Xmas music in strip malls and on the radio and it's too commercialized.

A way to sell more stuff. btw your guitar looks incredible. What is it?

 

[Hazel_1914]

I like your writing!

Thank you!!!

The situation got better, I got a surprise invitation to spend Christmas Eve with friends! Episcopalians specifically. I won't know anyone there, they won't know me, and maybe it'll be nice to worship God with people who don't spend the rest of the year being weird. The Catholic guilt can be postponed until after Epiphany , or perhaps after Candlemas on the 2nd of February.

 

[Metalhead]

I have come to hate Christmas due to the family memories attached to those gatherings.

Staying home and smoking weed is preferable to going to my family Christmas.

 

[Brian39WV]

When I was younger, I used to dislike holidays because I was always single on holidays. I think days when it was snowing or holidays were the days, I would struggle the most always being single. I am now in my late thirties. I guess with time things like that started not to bother me.

Like when I was younger and in college, I always felt horrible being alone every Friday or Saturday night. Before I turned 21, I would go on long walks around my campus on Friday and Saturday nights. Looking back, it was kind of a silly thing to do. But it felt much better than just sitting in my dorm room alone or something like that.

After I turned 21, I started drinking heavily on Friday and Saturday nights. I guess I felt extra miserable being alone on those nights so I wanted to numb the pain some.

Now I am older. I no longer drink even. But I do use weed edibles quite a bit to help cope with my loneliness. But do not use weed any extra on Friday or Saturday nights or anything. Even holidays do not really faze me. Snow- maybe just a little still. I would love to hold hands with someone and go for a walk in snow- I have never gotten to do that.