~ Or: How can we be holly and jolly if we’re basket-cased stress bombs carrying buckets of woe?
So here we are. What we know as the holiday season is upon us. The month of December is devoted to all manner of holy days – and some that are hilariously unholy – which should bring a sense of peace to our otherwise over-scheduled and jam-packed year, right?
Even on the airwaves, everywhere we turn there are voice singing “let’s be jolly” like some kind of radio-programming broken record. Although I can’t recall the last time I saw a hall fully decked out with holly. A hollied hallie. Or something.
You know what else we hear on the airwaves? Advertisements espousing the effective ruination of our month. Acknowledging the degree of insanity that we experience. “You’re wiped out this holiday season and you just found out that you have unexpected company coming over.” “This holiday season, beat the stress blues with <insert product here>.”
Our society of advertising and general living has acknowledged and accepted the fact that the month of December, by and large, is bat-guano crazy.
The opposite of what it probably should be, doncha think?
So what happened?
(warning: this is mostly an opinion piece. Just stuff that’s floating around in the keto-compatible fatty computer made of meat that resides within my skull. Most of it might not even make sense. But maybe somehow we’re all kinda feeling the holiday crunch together and you know exactly what I’m talking about. This post may very well be for you! It’s also super, super disjointed compared to other posts. Having been warned, you may proceed.)
The Various Things Celebrated During the Holiday Season
There is no shortage of holiday to be found during the course of this final month of the Gregorian calendar. Both “major” holidays as well as “minor” ones. Designations that I sometimes feel uncomfortable with because as soon as you start diving people into “us” and “them,” you immediately become one of “them.” But let’s roll with that for now. For the sake of following norms, some are listed below. Some with more words than others. For reasons.
Christmas
Religious or secular, participating or not, there isn’t much that can be done to fend off the unspoken promulgation of everything Christmas woven into our everyday lives for a solid month. Longer if you include the fact that fake Christmas trees have been on display at Home Depot since Halloween. From the fasting adherence of advent to the commercialization once decried by Charles Schultz, somebody you know somewhere is going to celebrate Christmas in some form or another.
There is an entire industry built around just the music of this one holiday. Pop music has made a mountain from sales and streamings of music over decades of participation on that front. Taylor Swift, Meghan Trainor, The Carpenters, Amy Grant, Elvis, The Beach Boys, David Bowie, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, Burl Ives.
But wait. There’s more. Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Kelly Clarkson, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, The Ronettes, Dean Martin, B-B-B-Bing Crosby, Destiny’s Child, Coldplay, Britney Spears.
And I guess Mariah Carey.
And all the way back to 1889 with the first recorded Christmas song originally known as “One Horse Open Sleigh” which we now just call “Jingle Bells.”
Of course, we can’t overlook the gifting process. The evolution of the wonderworking St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia (now modern-day Demre in the Turkish province of Antalya) to what we now know as Santa Claus probably hasn’t even reached its final form. But the tradition of Santa Claus remains just as much an unavoidable part of pop culture as all the rest of it. Along with that comes the traditionally accepted exchanging of gifts that we can actually thank worship of the Roman god “Saturn” for given the time-period of Saturnalia happening around the same time prior to Christianity kicking it in December. It wasn’t until roughly the 4th century that gift giving at Christmas was linked to the gifts of the magi.
The whole evolution of the holiday is a fascinating study. Probably another blog post for another time. We’ll get into why it’s so stressful in a bit. Moving on!
Hanukkah (Chanukah?)
Raise of hands, how many reading this can thank Adam Sandler for knowing more about Hanukkah than you did prior to Adam Sandler’s song about Hanukkah? Higher. HIGHER. Actually, I can’t see your hands. This is a blog. But the stretch probably felt good, didn’t it?
The festive celebration of lights is taking place in December as well so guess what? We’re roping that in too!
Dedication. In this case, celebration of rededication of the Holy Temple. Second century Syrian-Greeks were kinda stinkers and weren’t fans of any religious observance that wasn’t theirs. Why does this sound awfully familiar? Is it because absolute power corrupts absolutely? Is it because might is often mis-perceived as right? We humans are awfully predisposed to being rotten to anyone who is outside of our sphere of influence and belief, aren’t we?
ANYWAY! Sorry for the digression. Syrian-Greeks tried to force the people of Israel to accept their customs and ways and abandon previously observed religious traditions. The short version is: EPIC FAIL. They were successfully driven away. The temple was reclaimed and purified and a single cruse of uncontaminated oil burned for eight straight days until more could be made available after proper purification rituals. That cruse should have only lasted one day and it carried out for eight. As such, the eight days of rededication celebration are what we have today.
Christian children gape in envy over the eight days of gifts that their Jewish friends receive compared to their single day of frenzy. It’s a thing.
I apologize if it appears that I am glossing over the history of Hanukkah. While it deserves a spot in the holiday season rundown, my effective knowledge of the holiday is limited to online research. There are a LOT of materials to read on the subject. Plenty of history. I’m only scratching the surface. But here we are and we’re moving on for the moment!
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa is a celebration that I know even less regarding. As you can tell, my knowledge of different cultures and traditions is hilariously limited. One of the things I like about writing is that it forces me to learn about other things that I might not otherwise know. This is no exception!
Kwanzaa is an African-based holiday that begins on the 26th of December and extends to January 1st. It is a “first fruits” holiday related to harvest festivals, derived and translated from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza.”
There are seven candles involved in the celebration of this holiday. With each candle there is an accompanying symbol. Unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
In terms of age of the celebration, this one is comparatively new. It was encouraged by Maulana Karenga and first celebrated in the year 1966 and remains a prominent and important celebration to this day.
So. Many. Others.
There is no shortage of things to celebrate in the month of December. Internationally there is Boxing Day. Ōmisoka in Japan bringing in the new year. Diwali. St. Lucia’s Day. Las Posadas. Festivus if you really want to go wild. Some are more widely observed than others, obvi, depending on region and culture.
One other thing to take into consideration is the fact that, once again according to the Gregorian calendar, it’s the close of the calendar year. In terms of business, in many cases it is also the close of the fiscal year. Businesses are very interested in posting gains in their books. Especially retail businesses. Some of that frantic need is manufactured by a last-ditch effort to close out the year with a bang. The holiday season is a really good excuse for that.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s try to tie all this all together.
Other Frantic Holiday Season Considerations
The holiday season comes with so many “things that need to get done.” It’s like we’re cramming an entire year’s worth of gettings together into a single month. Overlapping holiday parties. Decorating. Cooking. Celebrating a single holiday TWICE in the same day to accommodate two sides of a family. Travel. Visiting extended family. Being visited by extended family. Baking things for several days straight. SO. MUCH. SHOPPING. All crammed into a single month.
Unless you’re my mother, who starts shopping for the following year the day after Christmas because she’s SMART like that.
To me it begs the question: is this really what we want?
I’m not trying to start some kind of cultural revolution or anything. But the “holiday season” that starts with American Thanksgiving – ya’ll in other parts of the world are doing it right by putting it in October. I’m just saying – and continues until whimpering into home plate at the end of December is exhausting.
It feels like the shorter I get, the more challenging this time of year is. I don’t necessarily WANT it to be more challenging. The kids -really- enjoy this time of year. I feel like when -I- was a kid I enjoyed this time of year. Possibly because I had no clue what my parents went through! But now that I’m shorter and getting even shorter, it’s a whole new experience.
It also makes me wonder: how many people do I know who on the surface talk about how amazing their holidays are and yet underneath it all are struggling just like so many of us? Willing it to be true? Determined to be on top of all the things? I dunno!
Why do we do this to ourselves?
My Theories on Why This Happens
It starts with tradition. Whatever the religious or secular background, so much of what we do is steeped in tradition. Sometimes it’s family tradition. Other times, cultural. Religious. Social circles. Sometimes they shift from one year to the next as our lives change.
Take those traditions and add a component of commercialization. Is your holiday season centered around Christmas? Andy Williams is among the many who sing that it’s the most wonderful time of the year. If you are a retailer, you’ve made certain of its wonderfulness through retail therapy. You don’t need to look too far back to get a sense of how insane that can be. Exhibit A: Tickle Me Elmo. The acquisition of things to give and to get.
If you celebrate a a religious component on top of that, there’s another thing to add to the list and prepare for. Then you start wondering why we only get one day for Christmas if it’s on a week day but sorta kinda two if it’s on a weekend for federal observance. And if you’re in the States, you gaze with envy outside the borders and the rest of the world celebrating Boxing Day.
The hemispheric dichotomy
I just …. don’t get it.
Why is it the most wonderful time of the year? In this hemisphere, there’s often inclement weather. Frigidity. Power outages. Wind storms.
It seems like it’s the most awful time of the year to have the most wonderful time of the year.
Are these songs that we sing to try and get out of denial?
Footnote: Unless you’re in parts of the country closer to the equator then you rarely get to feel the effects of the most awful time of the year to have the most wonderful time of the year. You just have sunshine and occasional rain. When you are asked to please have snow and mistletoe, you go home defeated every year knowing you can only deliver on half a request.
But then there’s the southern hemisphere. It’s summer. An Olaf’s paradise. The only way to experience a White Christmas is to TRAVEL REALLY FAR.
But back to this hemisphere.
Cramming for the exam
I alluded to family visiting earlier. Or going out to visit family. Or baking things. Fear of being judged by our peers for our self-perceived inferior capabilities in kitchen skills, gift wrapping, house keeping, or whatever else. Any ONE of those things alone would be quite a bit for most folks. I say most because there are those of you out there who have a natural predilection to being WILDLY successful at that stuff and ALL PROPS TO YOU.
Then there’s the rest of us.
Any one of those things would be quite a bit to try and handle. LOTS of them all crammed into a single month?
Seriously. It’s almost like we’re asking for some kind of pain and suffering. Atoning for some nameless, faceless sin.
WHY DO WE DO THIS????
Some kind of sorta conclusion, maybe?
As you may have figured out by now, I have absolutely no answers to this. None whatsoever.
It’s a vicious cycle that continues to effectuate stress on our lives and, by proxy, the lives of those around us. It probably seems like we’re trapped in this maelstrom of obligation based on the fact that “hey, it’s just once a year, you can dig a bit deeper and get through the month.”
I honestly believe we shouldn’t have to “get through” anything that is allegedly supposed to be wonderful.
So! I have a challenge for anyone who happens to be reading this. If you find yourself in a situation where you are stressed out of your mind during this or any other holiday season, join me in doing something radical.
Say no to something.
What that something is I leave up to you. But give yourself the opportunity to take control of one thing that you feel like you have completely lost all handle on. Bow out gracefully. Or with great force if necessary. But give yourself that bandwidth to extricate from SOMETHING that will give you a little more breathing room.
And THEN. This one is for me too. Do NOT fill it with some other obligation. Fill it with down time. Self care. Grace. Compassion. An acknowledgement that you are an earth mammal who has WAY too much to do during a single month and something has to give or you’re going to eventually go nuts and find yourself utterly resenting all of these things that are supposed to be merry and bright.
Say no to something. Be Teflon over any guilt you may be on the receiving end of if that is what it comes to.
Or tell them to call me and I’ll set them straight.
We got this. Let me know if you do decide to let something go! I’d love to know what that was – even or ESPECIALLY if it was me!! – and let’s compare notes!
Have a very happy and now slightly-less stressful holiday season.
Until next week!
-= george =-
