"Ooh! I hates Christmas!"
-Yosemite Sam (Bugs Bunny's Christmas Carol)
I don't hate ACTUAL Christmas. Christmas is a wonderful holiday full of family, warmth, and hope. There are just some things about this season that I just can't identify with. Happy crafters who are dumbfounded that I don't wish to set a holiday display on my mantle stress me out. People who obsess about finding that perfect gift drive me crazy. I don't own a set of Christmas dishes, loathe the constant blast of Christmas music, and get crabby when it's time to decorate the tree. It's as if there is some far and wide Midwestern American idea of what the Christmas season should be like...and...I don't get it. That makes me feel lonely. I find myself wondering WHY I roll my eyes, heave a sigh, and grouch my way through the holidays. This year, I may have found my answer.
Last weekend I was mentally preparing myself for the emotional assault that is the Holiday Season. I was reflecting on the hangups I have and wondering what my deal was. Then, it occurred to me a lot of these things really ARE foreign concepts to me. Until I was 11 years old, my dad was in the Army. Because of this, there was never a "going to grandmas" feel to the holiday season. My experiences with Christmas have created a unique lens with which I view this holiday.
When I was 3 years old, I spent Christmas a nuclear weapons facility in, what was then, West Germany. My dad's job was to guard the Pershing II missiles that were housed in this location. He would be gone for several months at a time. That year, his rotation happened to include the month of December. Soldiers were not allowed to leave the facility when they were on rotation. To boost morale, their wives and children were bussed from the base several hours away. My pregnant mom and I rode this large, school bus-like vehicle on Christmas evening. I got to see my dad for two hours, then we boarded the bus and rode back home late Christmas night.
The Christmas I was 6 was spent at my aunt and uncle's house in a small Kansas town. Again, my dad wasn't around because he was in school to change his MOS (something like a career change). I didn't see him at all that Christmas. My 8th Christmas was spent on an Army base in Georgia, where it was sunny and 75 degrees...we even turned on the air conditioner. My dad was there, but the climate didn't make it seem very Christmas-y.
Probably the most dramatic Christmas I had was when I was 9. My dad had been deployed to Saudi Arabia for Operation Desert Shield (which morphed into Desert Storm). Their company left on December 1st. So, instead of having warm, cheerful, carefree holiday fun, I stood in a blindingly bright, stark gym and hugged my daddy goodbye. Instead of cute holiday crafting, I attended company support group meetings with my mom and the other families that were left behind where we put together care packages for our loved ones. The only ribbons that we tied that Christmas were yellow.
My mom was so depressed the year that my dad was deployed that we didn't even set up a tree. We had one of those 12 inch tall ceramic lamps that was shaped like a Christmas tree...the presents went under that. To ensure that we didn't spend Christmas alone, a wealthy, middle aged couple (that we barely knew) from our church invited us to stay at their house. It was a glorious retreat. It smelled like earthy firewood and I got to sleep in a feather bed for the first time in my life.
After that year, my dad retired from the military and he was always around at Christmas. But after so many years of being away from our extended family and having to adapt differently to all of the Christmas curveballs that were thrown at us, our Christmases were still always changing. One year we spent Christmas with our extended family, another year we had my grandma over to our house, some years just the four of us celebrated together. I even spent two Christmases in Florida with my parents when they had a midlife crisis and moved south.
These are some of my Christmas memories. While there is sadness held within these experiences, there was also life, laughter, and togetherness that bonded me to my family. This traditional American culture of Christmas is not my reality. My exposure to this time of year is a little more gritty and untidy. So, to honor my understanding of the Christmas holiday, I am going to observe it the way I want to. I will choose not to acknowledge the outside pressures of how things "should" be at Christmas, but instead, select the traditions that are most meaningful to me and to my family and discard the ones that I find to be tedious, absurd, and extraneous. (I will write another post that will outline this attitude more specifically) It is my hope that, by being true to my history, some my emotional hostility toward all things Christmas will, at least partially, dissipate.
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