Why, hello, holiday season. Here you ARE, again, in your blinding lights and screamy ads about buying stuff and random elves sprouting all over the place. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s a little much for those of us who find ourselves on the struggle bus this time of year.

Also – I have holiday amnesia. Right up till the middle of November, I love the holidays. Thinking about laughing with family, singing carols, sipping hot chocolate, eating huge yummy meals all together and having time to enjoy the first falling snowflakes fills me up with all the warm fuzzies. 

I forget about the anxiety, the sadness, and the feeling of being so depleted it’s like I’ve been stuffed into a burlap bag and beaten with sticks. Which is extreme and disturbing and DOESN’T REALLY HAPPEN. What does is I make Christmas lists and holiday cards and travel itineraries and to-do lists and birthday plans – did I mention my child’s birthday is eight days before Christmas? – and work diligently to get everything done. Eventually I retreat into a burlap bag to hide and someone trips over me on their way to some holiday fun and I feel like I’ve been beaten with sticks. 

Holidays come with a lot of big glittery expectations. I am so good at setting and then struggling towards big glittery expectations! Case in point: growing up, I thought my job as an adult was to become both Jack and Jackie Kennedy, minus the womanizing. So this winter, I’m supposed to have the While House decorated, and pass some life-affirming generation-changing legislation while raising two sweet children . Ouch. I mean, the good news is lots of people are doing those things this winter, but they’re not on my list.

What is on my list, apparently, is talking about Santa Claus Christmas and Jesus Christmas with my daughter. We’ve been going to church every Sunday (coping mechanism!) where she’s getting the real deal in Sunday school, acting out Advent Bible stories of hope and miracle, but also of suffering and struggle and absolutely nothing in the way of contemporary Christmas style. That presents a real contrast to our weekday activity of admiring OPLD, better known as “Other People’s Lights and Decorations”. OPLD are all about sparkle and style. Sometimes they feature Baby J, but more often than not, it’s Santa Claus and ornaments and even large outlines of wrapped gifts twinkling in strangers’ yards. My daughter has picked up on this, asking me the other day, “Why do people go crazy about Santa Claus Christmas and not Jesus Christmas?” 

I was trying to spin that into a pithy analogy for her, something about the man in red representing Christmas Hype versus the baby in a manger’s gritty Christmas Real. But at the core of the Santa story is something precious and very real – belief. All the frenzied holiday must-do’s and stuff-buying is just a layer on top. So instead of trying to break down all of Christmas into the Gospel of Good and Bad According to Me, I’m trying to embrace what I love about this season while letting go of the stuff I don’t. Holiday card – yes! Outdoor decor, hard no. Baking – eh. Maybe, if I have time. 

And it’s all ok. It’s ok for my decor, and your decor for that matter, to be middling to non-existent. Or, look like it was engineered and executed by a child, because the Christmas decor at this house absolutely was. Or to never send another holiday card, bake another Christmas treat or attend another holiday party, if it’s not part of your joy. Genuine holiday joy looks different on everyone. Everyone’s true idea of celebration is like its own one-of-a-kind candle, but they all bring light in the end. 

And now that I’m relaxing my vague shame around zeroing out in the decorating department, I am starting to enjoy Christmas lights set up so lovingly at other peoples’ houses. When you see them from far away on a dark night, they inspire a tiny bit of warmth within.

Happy holidays, all you light-givers out there.