It happens to the best of us some years, maybe even to most of us most years. I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I know it’s happened to me enough times for me to be confident that I’m not alone. Maybe it comes before Thanksgiving when you realize you’re already hearing Christmas songs on the radio when you haven’t even bought your turkey yet. Maybe it comes when the big tree goes up at the local mall and you realize you’re in for another season of be-happy-or-else. More likely, though, it comes somewhat later and for more personal reasons. Maybe some stranger on the street who knows nothing about your situation tells you to cheer up because it’s Christmas. Maybe it’s the office holiday party where you’ve been roped into buying a gift for someone you don’t even like. If you’re anything like me, it probably involves being expected to spend the holidays with your family, forcing you to choose between being cooped up with relatives you can’t stand or having friends pitying you because you "can’t" (read won’t, but it’s none of their business) go home for Christmas. Or maybe you’re Jewish and the token-mention of Hanukkah here and there wears out more and more quickly every year.
I am referring, of course, to the Scrooge Moment. The moment that comes sooner or later when you just can’t take any more of the red and green decorations and hearing "Silver Bells" on the radio yet again and the aggressive, insincere cheerfulness. Maybe you feel like shouting from the rooftops that no, Virginia, there isn’t a Santa Claus, and for once you wish Ralphie would shoot his eye out and George hadn’t been born and you’re wondering how many of the couples in Love Actually are divorced by now. But hey, you really don’t want to be a big old grump, so you go looking for some sign that it’s okay to not be feeling super-happy about absolutely everything. But you can’t find one anywhere. Even your favorite cynical columnist has only glowing things to be said about friends and family and caring and all they’re grateful for and blah blah blah. You’re looking for a reality check, but everybody you know seems to be living in a Thomas Kinkade painting and you’re left all alone in cold, hard reality.
That, of course, just makes you that much more blue!
And that’s okay. You’re not alone, and there’s nothing wrong with what you’re feeling. Plenty of us out there have gone through the same thing in the past, and we haven’t forgotten. You can bet someone you know is living through it this year too. The only reason why you’re not hearing about it is the same reason why you’re not speaking up about your own state of mind: everybody is afraid of playing the grouch to everyone else’s Pollyanna. But we’re out there, whether we find each other or not.
I am intimately familiar with this whole phenomenon thanks to my very uncomfortable relationship with my family. Ours was a fairly cheerless house even at the best of times, and having the Christmas Spirit crammed down your throat all through December made it all the more noticeable. Rather than whine about my family here, I’ll take what I hope is a constructive route and offer some friendly advice to any young parents who might read this. If you wouldn’t put up with your youngest child constantly needling and mouthing off at you, guess what? Your older child(ren) shouldn’t have to live with it either. If you do expect your eldest child to just take the harassment lying down, you can expect hir to become very, very angry about it after a while. If you punish the older kid for being angry while letting the younger one off scot free for causing the tension in the first place, you can expect the older one to get even angrier and the younger one to develop a sense of entitlement to be disrespectful to hir brother or sister all the time. You can also expect the harassment to grow into outright abuse after a while. Ignoring bullies does not make them go away, and expecting the victim to live with the bullying in hir own home is just beyond the pale. Your children will ultimately grow up to hate each other, and frankly, you deserve it.
As early as age ten, I can recall being subjected to my sister’s constant nastiness, and getting screamed at if I reacted at all while no one ever said a word against her. It was never easy or pleasant, but at Christmas it was that much worse for all the aggressive holiday cheer. Somehow I was always the bad guy for spoiling the Christmas spirit when the little kids were just enjoying being kids. I often ended up stewing in my room while the rest of the family seemed united in their disgust for me – at least that’s how it seemed at the time.
I’ve been lucky enough to move on with my life and to patch up things with my parents somewhat (though not my sister; I will never have one word to say to her again), and I’ve rung in the holidays in all sorts of places with lots of different friends. But the Scrooge Moment does rear its head now and then all the same. Often, my family history is the reason. A well-meaning friend will act shocked and sorry that I’m choosing not to spend the holiday with my family, or maybe I’ll happen across a very joyful outing of what looks like a happy family at a restaurant. Worst of all, though, is the barrage of television ads showing joyous holidays around the family hearth, and Very Special Episodes of your favorite shows that always end with everybody happy together around the dinner table, with no sign of anybody being on hir own, by choice or otherwise; and any and all hard feelings are always swept under the rug.
Sometimes it’s easy to keep those things in perspective. Sometimes it isn’t. The great thing about Scrooge Moments, though, is that they do come to an end sooner or later. Most years, I’ve found my holiday bliss sooner or later no matter how uncomfortable things were early on. One year when I was perhaps 14, it arrived while I was lying in bed listening to the oldies station on my headphones with snow falling outside and the rest of the family safely on the other side of my bedroom door. A year or two after that, it was visiting a used record shop with my best friend and finding a favorite Beatles 45 on sale. Once in college, it was an hours-long conversation with a young woman I’d been hoping for weeks to get to know better, in her room with freezing rain falling outside and us warm and cozy inside. The year before I started grad school, it came when I finished off the last of my grad school applications after having worked on them for about six months. Once while I was teaching in Taiwan, it was a note from a co-worker written in precise English-as-a-second-language telling me how cute I was with my glasses.
And yes, of course there are years when there won’t be any such moments. I’ve had those too, though I do my best not to dwell on them. But once you’ve been through one such year, you learn a remarkable thing: we can survive the experience. January 2 will roll around soon enough, and everything will be back to normal. (In many places, of course, "normal" for January is cold and barren, and that’s all the more of a shock to the system after the sugar high of Christmas!) Then more than ever, people everywhere will remember that all those heartwarming images of the perfect holiday are just that – images. Not reality. And you’ll be all the better-able to make it through that for what you’ve just been through.
To those of you who really fortunate enough to have families you get along with and who really are in for a joyful holiday, more power to you. For the rest of us, don’t worry. You’re not alone, and you can make it through!