I have a deep secret that, as a retail worker and an ex-Catholic, I hate admitting, especially in a public forum, but hear me out: it's become relevant this year.
I really like Christmas carols. Especially the religious ones.
And I always have.
My many years in retail have sort of gutted the sheer, utter joy I used to feel for Christmas music, because--you know, retail. Playing the same damn secular songs over and over again from the middle of November on is just unbearable. (Looking at you, Mariah Carey. You know what you did.) And a lot of the more modern carols have absolutely lost their shine for me. How could they not? And there was a while there, right after I finished my last of twelve years in Catholic school that I really was exhausted of the non-secular ones, too. I loved my choir desperately, but there are only so many Christmas concerts during which you can sing O Holy Night. A girl needs a break. But there's a deep, childlike joy in me that can't shake my love of Christmas, and that includes the music.
Of course it includes the music. I am an absolute simp for music. Music is magic.
Christmas music is Christmas magic.
Anyway, this is all context. Let me give you the background. Then we can dive into the shit I should probably talk to my therapist about in the new year.
So, background:
Thanksgiving is our family's favorite holiday. Straight up. That is not in question. But my favorite holiday is Christmas. It lasts for two days, I get presents (I do love receiving objects. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE giving them, too, but damn I do love receiving an object), and there are twinkly lights. That's all this girl needs. I am simple and greedy. It's a tragic flaw.
Thanksgiving in my family is An Affair--there are people from both sides of the family, it's sheer chaos, my mom and I cook everything except the sweet potatoes and I really do mean everything, there is Jell-O, Dad brings up politics for no reason other than to Start Something, we mute the football, my Aunt and I swap a year's worth of book recs, and I eat an entire casserole dish of stuffing. I love Thanksgiving. It's absolute madness. (It was...not like that this year, but that's. a different post that I didn't write because it hurt me too much. Don't worry about it; it's not super relevant.)
Christmas, on the other hand, has always been divided. Christmas Eve is Dad's side of the family; Christmas Day is Mom's side. The whole time I lived in Chicago, the day determined which grandmothers' house we drove to. Christmas Eve was late afternoon, dinner, and presents at Grandma's, followed by coming home to stay up late and watch White Christmas. Christmas Day was brunch and presents at home, afternoon watch of the Nutcracker and dinner at Oma's. There was a system. I loved it. (It changed in later years, after Opa died and Oma moved to the condo, but like. Same rules still applied. We hung out with dad's side of the family on Eve and mom's side on Day.) I liked both equally. That's really not a lie, like, I know we all have favorites, but no, I genuinely liked both halves of Christmas equally.
And one of the best parts was that, on Christmas Eve, after dinner, in between presents and dessert, we would all just sit around the living room and sing carols. (I told you the context up there would be relevant.)
I'm not saying we were any good at it. You've got my grandma, an ancient little old Polish lady who was only loud when she was hugging you; my uncle, who tended to fall asleep at inopportune moments; my dad who #Tried and at least knew all the words; my Aunt who used to be in choir in high school but forgot everything she knew about singing sometime after her daughters were born; my other uncle who never learned the words despite us having little paper packets with them all printed in them; my sister who can't carry a tune in a bucket; my two cousins who were less than enthusiastic because it was ~embarrassing; and me. Who is actually damn good at singing, loved every minute of it, and had no inside voice.
Let me just say, with all the love from the very bottom of my heart: I absolutely carried those carol sessions for years.
But it was one of the few things my dad and I agreed on. We both really, desperately loved Christmas music and loved singing it, and loved singing it badly with our family. It was part of the tradition and it was a part of the tradition that we unconditionally loved. My aunt was always the one who brought up, "It's time for carols!" when we were working on getting dessert served, but my dad and I were by far the most enthusiastic. And we liked the same ones--the old standards and the weird, haunting religious ones that don't feel like Christmas songs because they're in a minor key (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel just owns my damn soul). We did a solid duet for Good King Wenceslas every year because we were the only two people who knew all five verses.
All right. Now you have context and now you have background. Let's do some therapy.
Yesterday was my first Christmas without my dad. Like--I've done Christmas in Colorado since I moved here, because traveling at Christmas is a hell dimension all its own and I always spent my days off on Thanksgiving, but he was still there. We texted. He called. We talked about carols even if we didn't sing them together anymore. It was still A Thing. But I didn't really notice, honestly, because it was just A Thing. It was part of the thing, it was part of Christmas, it's just what we did. I made a much bigger deal out of needing to watch White Christmas, because I was deep in retail hell and that movie is a bright spot of joy. I was determined to hate carols because I was so exhausted of hearing them at work that, yeah, I missed singing with my family, but honestly, there were other parts of the tradition that felt way more important.
Until yesterday. When Christie put on a CD while we were eating dinner and O Come All Ye Faithful just exploded in my chest like a goddamn land mine, tearing into me like a thousand knives.
O Come All Ye Faithful was Dad's favorite. Bar none. He knew all three verses in Latin and would solo them before or after we did the full family English rendition. I can't actually listen to that song without hearing it in his voice.
But I spent three months absolutely freaking out that I was going to breakdown and not be able to watch White Christmas this year because that was Our Thing that we did together, that was Our Tradition, and I was absolutely batshit panicked that him dying had ruined that movie for me. We watched it at the tail end of Thanksgiving with mom to make sure we could watch it (and it was fine), I saw the live stage production (and it was fine) and I watched it again on my own on Christmas Eve when tradition dictated I do so (and it was fine). I was sad, but I didn't full-body sob about it. Turns out, I can't really be sad while watching that movie.
So I was absolutely, completely, totally, deeply blindsided by O Come All Ye Faithful. I braced for Bing and Rosemary and Danny and Vera. When I got through it mostly unscathed, I relaxed, I thought I was home free. Look at me, having the first Christmas after my dad died and not being an absolute wreck! Look at me, look how strong I am, look how far along I am in my grieving! I'm Fine! Nothing can hurt me now!
Ha. Very ha.
I made it through dinner, got into the car with Lisa, and promptly burst into full-body ugly-cry sobbing. I fogged up the windows. I got snot all over my mittens. I had an asthma attack that it took me a full three hours to recover from once we arrived home. Because of a fucking Christmas carol. That my retail-working ass was pretty sure I hated.
Turns out, I don't hate Christmas music. I hate retail Christmas music. I still have a deep affection for the songs of my childhood that we sang on Grandma's living room floor, watching the candles in the tree and hoping nothing burned down, punctuated by Uncle Rich's snores and Uncle Dan messing up the words on purpose and Dad just belting it out despite the fact that he wasn't really good at it. Turns out that even though White Christmas was a major, important part of our holiday tradition, the fucking Christmas carols came up behind me in the dark and just stabbed me straight through the lungs, repeatedly and without mercy until I just imploded. Caved in like a rockslide.
And so, instead of really enjoying my Christmas Day, I spent most of today (yeah, we did it a day late for good reasons that don't really matter) just bonkers depressed, trying not to cry again, and just sort of holding my rib cage in my shaking hands any time Christie put music on. I refused to make a big deal out of it, and besides, I wanted to listen to the damn music. It just fucking hurt me the whole time I did.
And I know this shit gets easier over time, right? I know that that's how grief works. I'm a major fan of that tumblr post about the ball and the button. (Let me explain--grief is like a rubber ball in a box with a button. The ball is everything about the dead person you love. The button causes pain when hit. At the beginning, the ball is huge, because it's new and present, so it bumps into the button constantly and everything hurts. Over time, as the grief fades and you get some perspective, the ball gets smaller, so it only hits the button sometimes. Eventually, the ball is so small that you don't notice it, but every once in a while, like a Windows screen saver miraculously hitting the corner, the ball hits the button and you're a mess.) I know that my ball will get smaller with time. I know that it will stop hitting the button all the time. Nothing can stop it from hitting the button occasionally, but it will stop being so constant.
Except I realized yesterday that there's a second, secret button labeled PRESS WHEN CAROLS and the ball becomes magnetized to that spot whenever I hear O Come All Ye Faithful or Good King Wenceslas or whatever else we sang all the time, every year, and it just floods me. And I have this terrible sinking feeling that no matter how small the ball is, it's going to get magnetized every year. At Christmas. For the rest of my life. And maybe the super special secret holiday button eventually won't cause a giant wave of pain, but it's always going to be there. It's always going to be part of Christmas. A new fucking tradition.
And I hate that.
And like I said, I know it will get better, and I know my therapist would tell me to focus on the fact that I'll have a solid, lovely reminder of some of the very few happy memories I have of my dad, and that one day, when the ball is small and the button is faded, I'll be glad that Christmas carols always, always make me think of him. I know this.
But it doesn't stop the fact that the button got good and pushed yesterday, today, and I just had the shittiest Christmas ever after the worst fucking year on record, when I very desperately needed a Good Christmas, just one good thing, one blasted lovely thing in this hellyear. But nope. Not this year.
Fuck you, 2022.
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