The Holidays Laden With Hope and Expectation
Re-posted and slightly edited from the comments to a locked post on someone else's LJ, mostly for my own remembering:
I determined a long time ago -- I think sometime in or perhaps just after university -- that any holiday that people think is somehow special simply by virtue of being marked on the calendar is very likely to cause stress and strain, because that day is overburdened with expectation.
It happened, for me, over Christmas. I realised that my unhappy family had somehow expected the mythical Christmas spirit to carry us through and give us those magical Norman Rockwell Christmasses, filled with love and joy and humour, and everyone getting along. Of course, instead we pasted paper smiles over the rifts in our relationships and hearts. Those paper smiles couldn't take the weight of all that expectation. They tore, leaving us looking at the broken spots in our hearts and blaming each other.
The rest of the year, we were more careful of our brokenness, and didn't put quite as much strain on the weak places, because the rest of the year we felt less obliged to be perfect. When we broke down as a family, it was just a normal day that we were ruining -- not Christmas.
I don't know what to do about that knowledge, even now, other than to discuss holidays as calmly as possible with my partners well ahead of time (this works well for the smallidays, such as Valentine's, that carry few to no family obligations; it works less well for the Grand Family Days, which are still always problematic, if for different reasons now (i.e., the finity of time and the need to squeeze too many dinners into too few days -- these are merely logistical problems, for the most part, rather than problems of family dynamics))
I think, too, we were disappointed, because we somehow expected the holiday magic to make our problems go away for that day, and instead it did the opposite: the glowing lights of the tree somehow esposed our frailties and faults.
Part of this, I realise now, had to do also with my parents' differing notions of what a celebration looked like, and how a family should work. They have, in their turn, affected my ideas of how family celebrations work, so that as the Grand Family Days approach, I find myself wishing to be afflicted with the stomach bug that felled mycrazyhair a few weeks ago and torontoteacher just this week.
I am, perhaps, feeling a bit melodramatic about the subject.
It's possible that the fact that I have not yet finished my shopping may be contributing to my general dread, but I prefer to think of that as a symptom, rather than a cause.
We are, all of us, different people from the ones we were ten years ago, but we carry the ghosts of those younger selves with us, even so.
I determined a long time ago -- I think sometime in or perhaps just after university -- that any holiday that people think is somehow special simply by virtue of being marked on the calendar is very likely to cause stress and strain, because that day is overburdened with expectation.
It happened, for me, over Christmas. I realised that my unhappy family had somehow expected the mythical Christmas spirit to carry us through and give us those magical Norman Rockwell Christmasses, filled with love and joy and humour, and everyone getting along. Of course, instead we pasted paper smiles over the rifts in our relationships and hearts. Those paper smiles couldn't take the weight of all that expectation. They tore, leaving us looking at the broken spots in our hearts and blaming each other.
The rest of the year, we were more careful of our brokenness, and didn't put quite as much strain on the weak places, because the rest of the year we felt less obliged to be perfect. When we broke down as a family, it was just a normal day that we were ruining -- not Christmas.
I don't know what to do about that knowledge, even now, other than to discuss holidays as calmly as possible with my partners well ahead of time (this works well for the smallidays, such as Valentine's, that carry few to no family obligations; it works less well for the Grand Family Days, which are still always problematic, if for different reasons now (i.e., the finity of time and the need to squeeze too many dinners into too few days -- these are merely logistical problems, for the most part, rather than problems of family dynamics))
I think, too, we were disappointed, because we somehow expected the holiday magic to make our problems go away for that day, and instead it did the opposite: the glowing lights of the tree somehow esposed our frailties and faults.
Part of this, I realise now, had to do also with my parents' differing notions of what a celebration looked like, and how a family should work. They have, in their turn, affected my ideas of how family celebrations work, so that as the Grand Family Days approach, I find myself wishing to be afflicted with the stomach bug that felled mycrazyhair a few weeks ago and torontoteacher just this week.
I am, perhaps, feeling a bit melodramatic about the subject.
It's possible that the fact that I have not yet finished my shopping may be contributing to my general dread, but I prefer to think of that as a symptom, rather than a cause.
We are, all of us, different people from the ones we were ten years ago, but we carry the ghosts of those younger selves with us, even so.