As a child, I loved Christmas. It was three days of absolute magic and excitement. We were out of school, and there was a steady supply of cookies to eat as we played with our new toys. My grandma had a magpie instinct and decorated her house with twinkling lights and anything that glittered: cut glass figurines, mirrors, tinsel, crystal chandeliers. Her living room had that 1960s shag carpet so deep you could only rake it, not vacuum it. It dampened the sound from her massive console record player that was on a constant loop of the Rita Ford collection A Music Box Christmas.
Note: it was three magical days. Just three. Not ten. Not thirty. Not sixty. Not an endless barrage of commercials, cheap music, bellringers, and forced cheer. As a young adult, it lost its charm about the same time my grandma began her descent into Alzheimer’s. I developed a severe gift phobia that haunts me to this day. If you want to see a look of sheer panic in my eyes, hand me a wrapped present.
It only got worse as time went on: awkward family get togethers with in-laws, the crush of commercialism, the way tragedies pile up around this holiday. At one point in my marriage, we declared a moratorium. We stayed home alone and watched movies, christening our new holiday Cinemas. No more mediocre ham dinners. No more shopping for gifts nobody really wanted. No more faking a smile as I unwrapped a denim shirt embroidered with bird houses.
Then my pop got sick and I got sucked back into family Christmas events. But I am drawing the line. I’m only keeping what I love about this holiday from my childhood. I’m not agreeing to gift exchanges among adults who can afford to buy whatever they need and want. I’m not going to church. I’m not sitting through nieces and nephew’s musical performances. Seriously, you’ll find me in the garage drinking beer during those agonizing moments. I’m not even allowing anyone to ruin my Cinemas with depressing and serious movies.
The thing I’m embracing this year is butter spritz cookies. They were a staple of my childhood Christmases, and I inherited my grandmother’s cookie press in all its retro-future aluminum and copper glory. I pressed out a batch of traditional trees and poinsettias for my friend Robert, who felt he’d not received enough Christmas treats at work. Later in the week, when I go to my sister’s house, I’m taking the cookie press with me. I might even crank up the old Music Box Christmas album.
This year, be nice to yourself. Don’t gag down the whole monstrosity of Christmas, if you don’t want to. Keep what you love and leave the rest of it behind.
Bryn Greenwood 
I love it. More and more many of us are cutting back. I stopped going to Sunday church so long ago I can’t even remember. But, I kept going to Christmas eve until about 3 years ago. And it feels great. No. More. Church.
I enjoy making a huge English meat pie and taking it over to my parents. My sister and her family stay there and can make all the side dishes. My brother-in-law and nephew were really craving turkey, so I making a turkey breast, too.
The rest is up to everyone else. We have cut back on presents, drawing one name each. So much nicer.
I am even trimming back what I can see on FB. My brain needs more peace, not more clutter.
Happy Holidays! Enjoy!
I think that is at the heart of why we don’t enjoy life as much–we cram too much stuff in to enjoy it all. Cut back on some of it and it all becomes better.
One huge advantage that came out of being exiled from my parents’ house is that I don’t have to deal with the baggage of a big, tense Christmas celebration observed by people who didn’t like each other. My kids have carried on the traditions they wanted to keep: making and decorating cutout Christmas cookies, hanging up old ornaments and decorations leftover from their childhoods (which I hope were happy, in spite of their parents’ shortcomings), and playing in the snow (which isn’t going to happen this year, not in New York anyway). Anything they didn’t like, they threw out a long time ago.
That said, I miss Christmas Eve midnight service in an old Episcopal church with the classic carols and hymns. I’m the only one who wants to do this, so it’s up to me to fulfill it for myself. That can be lonely, but it also forces me to rethink how I want to observe Christmas. Traditions can also be about compromise and celebrations of your personal beliefs. Hope your Cinemas is a fun one!
I wondered about you, HG, because I imagined it would be a relief to have cut your ties to so much baggage. I’m glad that’s the case, and that you’re getting to choose your own observations.
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Krystal and I are finally doing this in our own lives. We do a tree and some porch ornaments, but nothing too much. We’ve managed to extricate ourselves from roughly 75% of the “obligatory” stuff [which means it was never obligatory to begin with]. We have a happier Christmas season by doing less of it.
It’s funny what seems “obligatory” until you just stop doing it. Then you find out there’s no goon squad coming over to make you do anything.
One feels quite liberated.
This is wonderful. My holiday tradition is coming home to hang out with my family. BSG stays in Arizona to hang out with his family. We miss each other but it’s nice to not force each other’s families on the other. No matter how much we love our own family, it’s not as much fun for outsiders.
In my little condo, I have a few boxes of Christmas decorations. The only decoration that is an absolute for display is a little battery-operated Christmas tree with tiny blinking lights. The rest is optional. We do put up all of the Christmas cards we receive as decorations around an interior entryway. I gave up even the premise of trying to get cards out to people years ago.
We never went to Christmas Eve services growing up, but we do now. It’s nice to see people whose families have been in our family’s lives for generations.
Now with the nieces growing up, our traditions will shift and evolve. What doesn’t change is the big family breakfast, presents, hanging out, and then the big family dinner. Food, family and a lot of love.
Ah, that’s a good compromise, that you both get to keep your family traditions, without having to endure each other’s.
Today I talked to my sisters. We are all over 60, we all have grandchildren, we all have drama with and in our children’s families, but we agreed we are happy these days and we love our lives. I said, “I think old age was made for women.” But still there is “the way tragedies pile up around this holiday.” This year in my extended family we had a suicide and a miscarriage, that I know of so far. In my post-menopausal wisdom, I think the error is in thinking that one particular day in the year should be more “special” than any other day. A day is a day and shit happens. What if we celebrated the special days whenever they happened?
This is why I don’t invest great importance in particular days. It’s more important to celebrate days that seem special than to try to force a day to be special because it falls on a day of the calendar that has been designated as meaningful.