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The Holiday Season Approaches

 

It is already September.  While this year felt like it lasted an eternity (and still kind of feels that way), it also sort of flew by.  People are preparing their Halloween decorations and pumpkin spice/apple cider candles, digging out their hoodies and stocking up on their s’mores ingredients. 

For my part, I feel like I’m doing these things just because that is what is expected.  I made Halloween crafts, I’ll pull out the other decorations soon. I don’t actually care about pumpkin spice (yes, really).  I do look forward to more hoodies and blankets though.  Otherwise…I guess I just don’t care.  Usually by now, I am chomping at the bit for Halloween to get here and leave so I can start on Christmas décor.  Anyone who knows me knows that every year, since the kids were little, we would watch the Polar Express, one of my favorites.  Christmas was always my FAVORITE holiday. I loved everything about the season. The giving nature of people, the singing, the lights, the laughter, just the feeling of hope and warmth I would feel the whole season. When I was younger, I would start preparing for Christmas in June. But this year?  I just don’t care. 

I try to carefully plan every Christmas.  When the kids were little, I would work hard to get what they wanted. I would take time to wrap and label and take all of the pictures. As they got older and wanted less (but perhaps more expensive) stuff, I tried to be creative in the way I would wrap and present their gifts.  Each year everything has become harder and harder and this year…I just don’t have the energy to deal with it. I don’t want to fight with people to give me ideas on what they want, who then often offer snarky comments when I try to guess. I don’t want to gift people who expect gifts but give nothing in return (not even a little bit of their time).  I don’t want to carefully plan everything that will absolutely not go the way I hoped. I don’t want to sit around waiting for schedules to align or people to care enough to watch a Christmas movie or two with me.  I don’t want to drag out decorations, because they will just serve to remind me of how much it hurts to not care about Christmas, and inevitably, every year, several people would criticize me for wanting to bring them out too early anyway.

This year has truly been a suck-fest.  For everyone, not just me. I can think of a million different reasons not to celebrate this year, and right now, admittedly, I am letting every one of those reasons win. It is devastating to me that the people around me and the events of the past several years could ruin something that used to be so, so vital to me. But here we are.

 


 

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