i dont hate christmas anymore!

Christmas time is really a time that can force us to reflect on our lives a little bit extra. Really makes us haul out thee old microscope and get us looking at certain things. Analyze the homestead, so they say.

I think our subconscious drives--mentally, physically, energetically- prolly all the same thing really-- somehow all get extra heightened during the Christmas Season; perhaps because of some kind of pervious pain (or pleasure!) related to this time of year… maybe because of all the pressure (or happy-vibes!) felt by us around the holidays.

Everyone experiences Christmas differently. Some people become holy, cheerful, enlightened Santa gawds* spreading joy and love and apple cinnamon wherever they go! (*I use this spelling of “gods” to be somewhat, self-pleasingly, unisex about it. I tend to create spellings for myself ;) Some people do genuinely feel the “love this season brings”. They’re the ones who love red and green and candy canes, who have holiday music in their voices- not only in their speakers. I love that about those people! I may end up as one of Those people sometime! Those are the people who great tv movies are made about!

But for some. Christmas is sometimes not full of cheer and care and rumballs.
Christmas can be a very stressful, depressing time of year. It’s the time of year when feeling shitty feels like the only option, or maybe that it might be ok… hoping that all the overly-happy people are picking up the slack of the negative people, to keep the human balance going.

I think there are many variants along the line of extremes of what happens inside all people during this time of year.

This Christmas Eve Eve (not to be confused with Christmas Eve ;), I’m having a major sinus headache all day. (trying to work past it, but feeling exhausted and slightly annoyed is preventing the full relief I have been wishing for all day.) I’m not in a devastatingly negative mood… but my spirits have definitely faltered today.

For me, since the age of about 12-13, i vividly remember Christmas being a time filled with tears and worry and rageful feelings of being alone and isolated.
Even in the midst of huge family gatherings, full of aunts and uncles and cousins and more- I felt alone. Scared. Awkward. Different. Disliked. Depressed. Pitiful.

I’m not sure if the reasons for my fear and worry stem only from those two Christmases in a row, when my grandmother got sick with cancer and then died- because for years later the tears and worry and loss were brought on by thoughts of my nan throughout my life—I always said that’s why I was so depressed and why I “hated Christmas” so much (yes, for over a decade of my life I “hated Christmas”!)
I could just start picturing memories of nan and me and flood into a downward spiral of depression—and stay there- and somehow like it and hate it all at the same time.
But now I’m wondering if there are underlying reasons as to why I felt so depressed this time of year for so long. I always thought it was because of losing nan, my second mother. But, now, after three months into a spiritual Yogic Enlightenment Studies program, I'm starting wonder if it may have stemmed deeper than that—that with some deeper reflection of the past, I can kinda see I have felt unhappy about Christmas long before my nan got sick.
I think whatever the root pain is for me, it’s why, even today, I “suffer” from a sinus pain that makes me “moody” and “non-festive”.
It appears that the last 6-7 years has gotten less and less dramatic around Christmas for me… I don’t cry so much about my nan any more… and I have even gone so far as to say “ I love Christmas!” and actually get in the mood and love the decorations, the music, the colors, the smells, the excitement of the kids, all of that… most days (still some moments i feel the tug of bahumbug, but i quickly notice and it slips away again- for a while longer). And that is such a huge evolution from where I was when I was a teen- very dark places.

This holiday season, I’m grateful that I started shinning some light on some of the darker areas of my life—there’s still a scattered sinus headache, worry and stressor around this time of year… and I still have a ways to go before I’m dressing as mrs clause, hand making Christmas ornaments and directing school plays. But. I don’t hate Christmas anymore! :)