Christmas is an idea fraught with anxiety and depression for me. The deadline for getting myself in a financially malleable position is upon us and I honestly can’t afford to use the $2 dryer at the laundromat let alone express my love for my people with gifts and well wishes. Now I fucken know that its not about all that but I also know how wonderful it feels to be able to show love through the giving of gifts. I am pretty good at it too. I have been guilty, in the past, of procuring gifts for people that more reflect what I want rather than what I think the other person would desire. But, for the most part, I think I am pretty mindful of what I am doing when I select gifts. In fact I usually know what I want well in advance of stepping out into the street and participating in commerce. So I feel sadness at being unable to do it the way I want to.
I think that my upbringing put quite a lot of emphasis on Christmas. It was always the culmination of everything and seemed to me that was the whole point of life, school, work etc, that everything in life built up to Christmas. School finishes and food gets fancy, gifts are exchanged and there are trips to the beach or holidays in the North Island and people are happy. Christmas seemed to be the focal point for our entire society so I always felt a weird anti-climax thing after Christmas and New Years when the whole grind began again. It took me many years to shake off this rather childish world view.
I think about some of the Christmases past that stand out. I remember the first Christmas I spent alone. I think I must have been 19 or there abouts. I think my folks were in India, my brother was in her majesties bung-hole and my daughter was with her mothers family. I set up a charcoal BBQ on the deck and sat in the sun all day reading and drinking Bacardi. It felt, to me at that age, a terribly mature and grownup way to spend the day. The drinks were in the right glasses with the right garnishes and the bottle was in a bucket of ice. The steaks were expensive cuts and I had fresh salmon with a caper/sour cream sauce. It was lonely though, I remember waking up and realising it was the first time in my life I’d been alone on Christmas Day.
The year after that I was travelling with my girlfriend in central Otago. We’d spent the summer working on an orchard and driving around exploring. We picked a car up in Picton and drove it everywhere we could. She’d never seen the South so it was really cool. Anyway, My folks and brother and my daughter were spending Christmas in Dunedin so we ended up hooking up with them for a few days and it was really nice.
My family make a big deal of Christmas for the kids. My earliest memories are of waking up to find a pile, no, a MOUNTAIN of presents underneath our tree. We always had real trees too. The place smelled like Christmas. I believed in Santa Claus. I do not know when I stopped believing but it was pretty sweet while it lasted. Actually one year my Grandma forgot to pack all the presents and bring them with us and I overheard the grownups talking about how “Santa is going to have to get presents from the service station up the road”. Back then everything shut on Christmas Day except for the petrol stations so, yeah, I pieced it all together. I think I made a point of not bumming my little brother out with this new intel I had on “Santa”.
After my Mum died we have sort of stopped having big family christmases. I know that the commercialism and selfishness aspects of it are pretty rank but I love that experience of overwhelming kids with a whole big pile of things they have wanted or things that surprise them. I’m a sucker for overdoing things like that. When my eldest child was about 4 my brother worked at a chocolate factory and at Easter she woke up, literally covered in Chocolate. Her whole bed was covered in Eggs and bunnies and giant blocks of chocolate. It was an amazing experience watching her face register what had happened.
As I said before, I mostly have left that childish expectation that Christmas be this huge climax but I do still feel a bit glum that I won’t really be a part of anyones Christmas this year.
I have been at the Dr today. I am trying to get some help but the things I am struggling with seem almost insurmountable and I sense that the Drs feel that way too, that I am in the “Too Hard” basket and so they just pass the buck. I have a Urology Appt in January so hopefully that will be addressed. Being more mobile would make a huge difference. after that if I can get a handle on my mental health then I think I can build a little life for myself. My babies are at my Dads house today but I can’t go and see them. To hold them and to tell them how much I have missed them and how much I love them. Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
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