Like when I was a kid, seeing all the holiday decor around the neighborhood, the stores, the streets, always felt cozy. I don’t get that feeling anymore. I get the memory of it, but not the actual feeling. I don’t think I got jaded but maybe I did. What about you?
Holidays have definitely gotten more… I mean, I wouldn’t say “magical”. But enjoyable as an adult.
As a kid, the media I consumed told me that christmas was a happy and magical time that I should be excited about. But as I got older, I kind of ended up facing the fact that the expectations I was sold simply didn’t live up to reality. Christmas was a long parade of boring chores leading up to the day-of. I enjoyed getting presents - but as I grew up, the enjoyment of this faded as I realized that physical things like this didn’t really make me happy. Though, not deriving joy from the presents I got didn’t take the sting out of the fact that the number and quality of presents my sister got always made it clear who was the favorite child. And then visiting extended family was an exercise in extended time in the car, chores, being bored waiting on others, feeling uncomfortable as I didn’t know what to say to people I was “supposed” to have a close emotional relationship with, and never having any privacy.
But pretty much as soon as I left for college, I noticed that returning home for the holidays was absolutely terrible. Away from my family, I felt happy and normal and hopeful for the first time in my life, and returning home put me right back into depression baseline. So I stopped going.
Now as an adult, I spent my holidays with friends. Christmas dinner goes potluck style. Maybe there’s a white elephant. We wear ugly christmas sweaters. But outside the day itself, there is very little buildup and therefore very little stress. Just people I love coming together to have a good time.