If you know me, even a little it is no secret that Christmas is not my "thing". I loathe it, I TRULY hate it. For most of my adulthood it's been an ongoing joke. Right around November friends and colleagues start giving me shit. Singing Christmas music to me, asking me about my holiday plans.
Y'all make fun of my delay to get my tree up and how quickly it comes down. You tease that for someone who hates the holiday so much, how is it possible that my decorations are so pretty and my shopping is ALWAYS done long before necessary. So.. I'm FINALLY going to put this out here for you guys. When you're done reading and you feel like a complete ass hole- just know I still love you and you can still tease me.
Some of you have heard my life story a million times over but for fun sake, let's recap. I was born to a 16 year old, unwed, drug addict. From the start my mother was honest with me about most things, one of those things being her drug addiction. My mom had no qualms about using in front of me, sometimes asking me to "rack" her lines for her. (She was handicap which is another story for another day.) With this new knowledge you can understand that we didn't have a lot of money and sometimes we were homeless. I've lived in a shelter, I've slept in a car. Mostly my grandparents would take me in when things would get bad but this was the story of my entire childhood.
Christmas was not the same for me as it was for other kids I knew and hung out with. I can remember being told nearly every year not to get too excited. Santa wasn't real, he wouldn't be slipping through the door with presents for me because there was no money. Let's rephrase, there was money for drugs but not enough for a sticker book and a bike for yours truly.
On the rough years I would go to sleep, wishing they were wrong. Hoping that for sure, Santa was real and would appear with a tree and presents. (yeah, a lot of years there wasn't a tree either.) Now, for most kids or families in this position you would think the focus would be on family or quality time together. No, no such luck. I would wake in the morning, to find nothing there and the day was the same as any other.
On the not so rough years, my grandmother would pull out a small tree, usually real. She would shove some decorations at me and we might put it together. Some years there were presents in abundance and some that were salvaged by my DeeDee and Uncle B. No matter the year though, good or bad there was never any magic.
Christmas music makes my head hurt, my tree will always be fake, decorations look like clutter and my need to get my shopping done early comes from a place of fear. Not having anything or enough of something under the tree for my babies is a legit fear so I start shopping and collecting in September every year.
We have our own traditions, sure. I yell at the kids to stop clustering the ornaments, I say the "fuck" word at least a dozen times and I get pissed at the amount of glitter I have to vacuum every year from the stupid ornaments and hoopla.
Here is the most important part for me though. My kids, know very little about why I dislike Christmas. They know it's not my favorite holiday and they know they have to pull me into it, every year. For them, it is magical. For them, it's more than just presents under the tree. It's the excitement of Aubrey and Madison taking over the elves on the week's they're home. It's turning on the Christmas lights when they get home and looking forward to all the family get togethers we have. The inevitable Santa gift that will bring a smile to all of their faces. The gratitude they show when it's all over. For me, it's taking the tree down on Christmas day and shoving it back away where it goes. It's putting all the extra garb away and forgetting the day happened. It's whole heartedly appreciating the 364 days that will pass before I have to do allllll the bullshit again. It's knowing that people around me will mostly turn back into normal weirdo's instead of Christmas weirdo's who suddenly forgot that Christmas is the same fucking day every year and their lack of preparedness isn't my urgency.
So when you assume that I am just a Grinchy ass hole, it's mostly true. My child hood trauma though, still runs deep. I'll keep doing the good stuff for my kids but for me, Christmas is always going to be a No.
