The title of this piece is “What DO the holidays mean to YOU?” and I found myself thinking about this very same question after an encounter I had with a fellow tenant on the elevator in my apartment building. He was probably in his later 50s, healthy looking, and came across as pleasant and personable.
Being one who is
frequently quiet and shy, I tried to fill the uncomfortable silence for the
ride 12 floors down to the lobby with small talk. The approaching holidays only
seemed like a natural topic.
“Ready for the
holidays?” I asked.
Now, I had seen
this man in passing in the halls of my floor for I don’t know how many years
and, aside from the occasional impersonal “How are you?” that people naturally
find themselves exchanging, I hadn’t had a real conversation with him of any
real value.
“I don’t have any
family here,” he said. “The holidays don’t mean that much to me. I guess I
could visit my sister in Hawaii.”
Opposite of his
usual upbeat demeanor, he had his head lowered as he said these things and I
could swear he wore a sad, almost wistful expression. “Well,” I said, trying to
change the conversation, “We’re almost having Hawaii-like weather here now.”
It was maybe a
20-second ride down on the elevator but that short trip left a lasting
impression upon me and got me thinking about the holidays and what they mean to
me now, and what they used to mean to me a long time ago.
Now the holidays
seem to be a time of great anxiety, and I know that I’m not alone in that
feeling. In some cases, there’s the extended visits with relatives we don’t see
much (do we really just avoid?) during the year and the hours we have to endure
– painfully, in some cases. At Thanksgiving, we inevitably eat too much, drink
too much, not always taking the time to stop and think about all we have…all
those things for which we should be grateful.
Christmas can be
worse. Did we get what we wanted? Did I buy the kids the right things? Will I
be hosting the Christmas dinner AND the Thanksgiving dinner?
For me, Christmas
seems like all prep and little lasting pleasure – like a big to-do list. The
pleasure is when it’s BEHIND me…that week between Christmas and New Year’s
where it’s like “one down, one to go.” It’s hard to remember those times as a
kid when Christmas just seemed to materialize…the milk and cookies for Santa (I
ate them all myself this year)…the getting to bed early (I never got the hang
of that!)…and getting up early to see what presents appeared magically overnight.
For others, who
don’t have a family or friends, the holidays can be a crushing time on the
spirit. But the commercials never show THAT side. They only reinforce what
yours SHOULD be like…impossibly perfect.
Perfect for me as a
child was train displays any bubble lights on the tree…and having two sets of Christmases
because my parents divorced when I was very young. It was a small consolation
for coming from a single-parent household.
I try to reach back
into the past to pick over those memories like a still-warm Thanksgiving
platter for leftovers by which I can bring meaning and happiness to the present
holidays. I’m overly sentimental and a sucker for traditions and will watch “A
Christmas Story” – itself an over glorified Christmas representation – until my
family threatens to kick me out on Christmas Day. I would insist on watching it
so much that inevitably they bought me the DVD.
I still make them
watch it anyway. And they still complain.
The holidays can
never live up to perfection in our minds. Last year, or maybe it was the year
before, I posted online that, regarding the spirit of the holidays, I “just
wasn’t feeling it.” And I remember being surprised by the number of people who
weighed in, expressing the same feeling.
I think it’s
because our lives change – both where we are in life and who is in our lives.
There’s really two phases of the holidays – childhood and adulthood. And there’s
no comparing the perspective of the two.
When we’re young,
life is stretched out before us. And we have no idea what to expect. Like
anything in life, the first time experiencing a thing, whether it’s the
holidays, or love or heartbreak, seems more significant. After that, it’s never
new again. We experience life through the wonder and innocence of a child’s
eyes only once in life, and some childhoods are tainted by a divorce, or the
death of a parent. Just like the holidays, no childhood is perfect. But we get
by.
In adult hood, we
gather around us friends and loved ones to recreate those special memories we
cling to (or create in our minds). But with the passing years we lose that innocence,
that ability to believe, to wonder, to just experience life unquestionably. It’s
something once gone you can never get back and even if you could it would never
be the same. And at that moment when you grow up, although you may be too young
still to fully understand, you know that something has changed forever in how
you will see the world.
And so we fill that
void with buying sprees, or too much food, or too much booze…looking for some
way to compensate for those things we’ve lost.
Christmas should be
a magical, special something we can cherish into adulthood, even as we grow.
I’m still searching
for that meaning myself.
(C) Martin Walsh 2014
