The Sad Christmas: Remembering When

The decorations are all down. I miss them already.

It took the better part of today to get the job done--not only taking down, wrapping, packing away, but also sorting out what I do not want to keep for another year.

Larry takes down all the outdoor stuff. He puts it up, and takes it down, which I totally appreciate. I dearly love outside lights at Christmas, and these days, so does he. I joke about his redneck Christmas tree, and that it's beginning to look like Chevy Chase lives here, but I love it.

One year Larry just refused to put up lights, and told me to do it myself if I wanted it done. It was two weeks before Christmas, and passed time, in my mind, for the lights to be up. We had the biggest fight that day. I put thelights up by myself all right, and got the tree up and decorated, but that was all I did. I was so angry I didn't speak to Larry for days.

Then my mother went into a coma after what should have been a simple surgical procedure. I went to Virginia to stand vigil at her bedside for a few weeks, until, like a miracle, she came out of the coma just before Christmas. During that time I didn't call to talk to my husband, didn't help him figure out Christmas gifts or Christmas day dinner, just did nothing. If I called home, I talked to my youngest son, who was only ten or eleven years old and I know felt abandoned by me. One of my sons went to our home on Christmas, and called me to try to figure out what he could make for dinner. I didn't care; between the grief and stress of my mother's illness and my anger, I felt nothing at all for anything or anyone else.

My heart was grieving--for my mother, for the season I loved so well, for the man I didn't understand. I don't know when I have ever been so angry, a deep, abiding anger that I allowed to grow and burn. But on New Year's Day, when it was clear my mother was out of danger, I called home. Neither of us mentioned the fight, the angry words, the sad Christmas. I came home soon after, and we somehow managed to make things right again.

Since that year, Christmas has become a joint effort. Larry realized that his sour attitude about the season hurt not only himself but his family. And I learned that such hard anger is not healthy or productive.

I also began studying Christmas. I wanted to know why it was so special to me, beyond the religious significance. It was something deep in me that resonated with the lights, the decorations, the traditions that I held so dear--and that were completely foreign to my husband. As I researched, I came to understand that many of my mother's traditions, brought with her from England where she was born, had deep roots in history and folklore. And for some reason, those traditions were part of my psyche, part of me.

Before I studied the folklore of this time of year, I would get depressed  in November and hated winter. Now that I understand that the days get longer, minute by minute, I am excited about the season, and understand its blessing--giving us rest, quiet time to renew our spirit. I understand why I always wanted a fire on Solstice, why I felt compelled to find mistletoe and string up lights and cut greenery. It's been a journey of revelation and self-discovery. While the birth of the Christ Child will always hold magic and mystery for me, the older traditions, dating back to the mists of history, ground me in who I am.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.