The Melancholy: My Love-Hate Relationship With Christmas
I hate Christmas. I love it. No — I hate it.
I hate Christmas.
I’d spit those words carelessly into the wind like the aloof twenty-something I once pretended to be.
Year after year, I’d stake a claim to my chic indifference toward the holiday season. This was a stupidly stoic way of saying, “Despite being surrounded by others, I deeply love Christmas in a way that haunts me — in a way that emphasizes my loneliness, in a way that ridicules my sadness, in a way that stings with emptiness.”
I hate, I hate, I hate…I love.
And although — although I’d shrug it off to anyone in my path, if you were someone who took the time to read my eyes, you would know instantly that it was simply the melancholy talking. The melancholy one feels from longing.
I found a secret joy in cooking, baking my yearly traditional Christmas Eve tourtière, cracking open that jar of domestic shit that I’m not usually inclined to partake in — the tree, the decorations, the elves (even when I didn’t have children), and very specific traditions that I loathed to stray from involving booze, pajamas all day, listening to Christmas music and making my children wait and pose on the stairs Christmas morning, just like how my mother would have us do.
The Stockings Were Hung by the Cardboard Fireplace With Care
I loved Christmas as a child.
Having a flair for the dramatic, the holidays always delivered that roller coaster range of emotions responsible for building the foundation of an actress/writer-type such as me.
I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m laughing, I’m sobbing, I hate it, I love it, I go overboard, I hide.
My parents did up Christmas well. And 1970s Christmases can’t be beat. Truly.
For years into my adulthood, I longed to recapture the spirit of a holiday that my parents crafted with carelessly tossed tinsel, ribbon candy and assorted nuts, stockings labeled with masking tape trailing up the staircase, a flashing star on the tree that made our floor model television flicker all snowy, matching Sears pajamas, Santa’s elves watching (well before the ever-trendy and over-reaching “Elf on a Shelf” thing), and the beautiful cardboard fireplace that I was so excited to see year after year.
Our fireplace was beautiful, what with its shiny orange paper fire and red bricks. I can’t imagine it was any more of a fire hazard in 1975 sitting there against the cranked-up heating vents than, say, a real fireplace or poorly wired strands of lights on the tree. (But we should probably talk about the real candles sitting up there.)
My brother bought me one of these retro beauties a few years back knowing how charming I find good old-fashioned Christmas kitsch. It’s one of my prized Christmas possessions.
And When My Parents Divorced — We Got to Do It Twice
More than anything, I remember feeling an innocent, pure joy unlike any other. Aside from my Catholic upbringing and the religious aspects of Christmas, maybe there’s nothing more to it other than the anticipation of getting new toys and eating lots of treats and the whole general excitement of the build-up to Christmas morning.
And then there’s the darker side.
I remember the first time I really heard O Holy Night. It was in the back of my Dad’s car on our way home from mass. I was about nine years old. I thought it was the most beautiful song I had ever heard and it moved me to tears; not just tears, but sobs. And it still does. (Although that might just be a hormonal thing now, I’m not sure.)
It is still one of my strongest childhood memories to this day. I can see the frost on the car windows. I remember choking back my emotions and the pain in my throat. I recall how the tears chilled on my cheeks. Was it just the song? It’s beautiful, absolutely. It was the first year without my dad living at home — and although both my parents were really into the holiday, there was something magical about my father at Christmas.
Perhaps my soul recognized something in my dad — Bucky — that would take some time and years for me to face in the mirror. The dichotomy of his spirit, although very much controlled through a need for alcohol, was part sad and isolated, part gregarious and charming.
Bucky came alive at Christmas. His goofiness shined. His fun-loving, funnier-than-hell personality broke a room, his eyes glistening, his laughter infectious — bouncing me on his lap, rubbing my nose with his and saying, “pizia” — whatever that meant. But it was ours.
He would cackle as we put out beer and cookies for Santa Claus, and didn’t miss a beat late in the evening when making sure jingle bells were clearly heard and hoof prints could be discovered in the morning snow.
(He sure did overcompensate.)
The two of us would be the first ones awake in the morning, giddy with excitement in our matching pajamas. We would wake the house — but have to wait! Mom and Dad would get their coffee, the Jim Nabors Christmas album and tree lights would go on, Dad’s video camera readied — and then, only then, could we slowly come down the stairs after my mother gave the signal…stopping mid-way for the wow, look at all the presents shot.
The day would continue. Grandparents would dance in underwear while drinking highballs. Food would be made. Games would be played.
And, yes. When they divorced — we did it twice.
But it was never the same.
I could never, no matter how hard I tried, how hard I continue to try, replicate what I thought in my mind as a child that magic was.
I’m not religious. I’m barely spiritual. I’m what the kids call a dormant Catholic.
But that song? O Holy Night — it kills me to this day. I cannot hear it without it transporting me back to that cold Christmas Eve, the first year my parents weren’t together anymore.
The year I lost my first love.
Pizia, Pizia.
And Then — I Grew Up
As I grew up, I somehow thought I had lost that innocent, pure joy on Christmas. It became not so much about hating it as it was about longing to find it again, almost obsessively. I wanted more than anything as a young adult to find that kind of happiness, to find that kind of belonging, to fill the voids that adulthood brings — if even just for a couple of days. Having children certainly helps keep the spirit alive, for sure, but it can still feel lonely and empty.
I don’t know. I’m an idealistic dreamer type, and even in my old age, I still hold out hope that one day my life will be in a place where I wake up on Christmas Eve and feel like…holy crap, I belong somewhere — my heart braying, “I love, I am loved, I am home.”
That said, one of the beautiful things about aging is you learn to let go, and you learn that who you are — is simply who you are.
The people are still there, even the ones who have died.
Pizia.
The love is still there, even if it isn’t by your side.
Pizia.
The laughter is still there, ringing through the air.
Pizia.
The food, the tinsel, the music, the loud booming voices of family, the masking taped stockings, the ribbon candy and nuts, the smell of mass, highball glasses clinking, the matching Sears pajamas, and even leaving beer out for Santa…it’s all still there.
My Dad passed away a few years ago now. But he is still very much here.
Our lives evolve, but our experiences, our memories, and our hopes for tomorrow live on just how they were and just how we want them to be.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling a void on Christmas because that void will make us appreciate and embrace the times when we feel more complete. Besides, not having more to strive for breeds complacency.
That void means we’ve loved and have been loved; that void means that we feel, and we feel deeply. The void isn’t that there’s something missing, it’s that there is an opportunity for something more to come.
Merry Christmas.
I love it.
I have always loved Christmas - the songs, the decorations, the lights, the bright colours (I’m Canadian) and how people are nice to each other (which they should be all year.) It’s such a short season that I celebrate all December.
I also love Hallmark Christmas movies. Even though they are formulaic, all the characters are kind to each other.
Thanks for writing this piece. Each part of it made me smile and elicited a happy memory🎄
This was a beautifully written trip down memory lane! I’d totally forgotten about those cardboard fireplaces until now. But I do remember when the Dorothy Hamill haircut was trendy. I coveted that coif but my hair was too curly for it to work 😆
I can relate to your mixed feelings about the holidays and family.