The Earliest Yet

I must say I surprised myself tonight--I had my first meltdown of the season! I think this is the earliest this has EVER happened. I always know it is going to come--usually more than once--but I definitely wasn't expecting to go off the day after Thanksgiving!

For anyone who has read this blog for a while, this isn't news to you. To the rest, here it is: I. HATE. CHRISTMAS! While I love the meaning behind it, I have rarely had a wonderful Christmas--and a lot of the reason is The Mother. She lost her mother as an infant and was abandoned by her father. Every year he promised her he would see her at Christmas and every year he didn't show up. This, of course, stayed with her as an adult and she would be very depressed during the season. Even though she tried to keep her feelings from me--at least when I was very young--she wasn't quite able to pull it off. The fact that we weren't very well off meant I couldn't have the things other kids did, so, combined with The Mother's depression and my not getting what I wanted, I developed a loathing for Christmas, as well.

When I got my own family, I tried desperately to make the 'perfect' Christmas. Every year I worked myself to the point of exhaustion and every year I failed in some way to have a 'Norman Rockwell' Christmas. I began my Christmas baking at least a month ahead of time--I always felt as if I didn't do enough if there were less than 20 dozen cookies in the freezer. I would make at least 6 loaves of nisu--a Finnish cardamom sweet bread--caramel corn, peanut brittle, fudge, Chex mix, and 6 loaves of cranberry bread. (I could have done more, I just have forgotten.) I also went through an extended period of making most of the gifts we gave to the families--I made so many crocheted snowflakes that I can't even come close to estimating the dozens I have done over the years. And I decorated our house to within an inch of its life--I always called the decor 'tacky Christmas boutique!' Every place a decoration could be placed, there was one. All of the windows and doorways had lights and garland--we had two decorated trees. I have a wall of bookshelves in the dining room and I would remove all of the items from those, just so I would have a place to display some of my Christmas collections. I literally went crazy at Christmas.

Maybe things would have been okay if The Mother wouldn't have been the way she is. When the girls were very young, we would 'go home' for Christmas. I would usually be there for a few days before Christmas and K would follow on his days off. We did this every year until a few years after our youngest was born. It just got to be too difficult to haul all of the gifts up there and then haul them back here every year, so we stopped doing it. Besides, I felt we needed to start our own traditions. This didn't go over too well with The Mother. She felt as if we had a tradition by going there for the holidays. (Funny thing is, WE always had to go to them--The Family has never made the effort to come here to our house!) Not only did I want our own family to be together, but I needed to break away from The Mother's possessiveness. Our time there wasn't pleasant for me at all.

When we would be 'back home' for Christmas, the time went like this: on Christmas Eve we would go to K's parent's house where we had a meal and then all of the kids opened their non-Santa gifts. Considering there were at least ten grandchildren, this took a bit of time. BUT, we were always trying to rush our way through things because MY family expected us to be at Christmas Eve church services with them and THEN open gifts at The Parent's house afterward. The Mother never was satisfied with the amount of time we spent with them--she always thought any amount of time we spent with my in-laws was too much. This always put me under tremendous amounts of stress. And she was always so jealous of the time I was away from her that I had to downplay any good I felt while with my in-laws. It just got to be so much easier to stay at home--and my stress level wasn't nearly as high.

So, there is the background of my Christmas depression. Add to this my tendency toward SAD and the fact that I have nothing to do with my family and you can see where my dislike for the holidays comes from. Still, despite all of what I went through in years past, I find myself getting very nostalgic, sentimental, and weepy at this time of year. (My doctor offered to give me a prescription--he thinks it is mostly SAD--but I know I will be much better on January 2nd, so I declined.) There definitely are times when I wish we were still part of a family and able to celebrate together, but that ship has sailed. I have had to--for my health--distance myself from The Family and I can't go back anymore. So, I will continue to cry at Folger's commercials and know that this, too, shall pass.