The Great Holiday Struggle
The holiday season is a bit of a tricky time for me. It’s all a big bowl of feelings. From one extreme to the other. There’s a lot of grateful, thankful, excited. There’s also a lot of anxious, sad, & exhausted.
Growing up, I think my family had the most beautiful, perfect holidays. We always celebrated at my grandma’s house. Christmas especially sticks out to me. Her house was decorated from top to bottom. She had the little holiday village houses all set up. Every year I got to set up my little ice rink in the village. She had the holiday bears. A small Christmas tree in the sitting room off the kitchen & a tall gorgeous tree one the living room, right by the ginormous picture window that looked out the lake. It looked like it was out of a magazine. She had a ceramic nativity scene with a manger my grandpa built that we would set up every year and she would tell me the Christmas story while we did. We would hang all of the stockings for kids on the railing up to the loft & the stockings for all the grandchildren and great grandchildren would get hung in the big picture window. There were 5 kids and so many grandchildren and great grandchildren I can’t even count them off the top of my head. And they all came. Every year. Everyone came.
Grandma was always in the kitchen, continually shoeing people out of it, slapping hands away form the deviled eggs, greeting people when they came in the door. We would move the little table from the sitting room and move it to the living room so that we could set up a big folding dining table & chairs for more seating in the sitting room. There were so many people at Christmas that we had to sit at three different tables! But the house was so warm, it was so cheerful & pleasant. Whenever I think about it, I start welling up with years because I miss it so much. The holidays were one of my favorite, most memorable and cherished childhood memories. I can remember the smell of the air, the joy present from joking around with my cousins. The excitement that bursted through my smile whenever someone would pull in the driveway and walk through the door. Family was so important to my grandma. I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that I’m so much like her & it only makes me miss her that much more.
I’m so grateful for my grandma & everything she did for me. I think the reason I am the person I am today, have the values that I have, is largely because of her. I spent so many weekends there & lived there for a few years, and I think without that, I’d be a completely different person. So when the anxious, sad and exhausted feelings show up to the party, I’m grateful still. I’m anxious because I care & want everything to be joyful and for everyone to feel loved. I’m sad because I miss my grandma, and how close the whole family was, & I miss those holidays as a young girl. I’m exhausted because I’ve put 110% into making sure that those memories I have as a child will be replicated for my children and all the kids in my family. All of that is worth it.
Even though it may not seem like it, we have power over our thoughts. Over the way we view our feelings. There are so many things that I could choose to feel negatively about. I could let them make me bitter and angry. But all that would do is steal from me. It would make me miss out on the things that I love most. My family. My friends who are my family. There are going to be stressful things that surround everything we do in life, but we can’t let that stop us from living our lives and striving to be the people we want to be. I challenge you to change the way you think about all of the feelings & the stress that happens during this holiday season. Changing your mindset makes all the difference in the quality of life we live.
Even though anxiety, sadness, & exhaustion are most commonly known as negative feelings, they don’t have to be. They mean we care. They mean we’re alive and we’re human beings with a big heart. And as silly as it may sound, those are the things I’m grateful for.