First of all, ON, I love your sig line. "All is the prey of life."
About Christmas. It is an incredibly difficult time of year for me as I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. I find it extremely stressful that the family looks to me to meet their varied needs regarding this holiday. I am a widow, and would, in an ideal world, take a cruise to the Carribean over Christmas. My oldest daughter (20 yo) loves every holiday and really needs them all to be 'done up'. but I just can't do it. So every year, there is the tension caused by her unmet expectations. She yearns for the Mom-Makes-A-
Wonderful-Christmas-For-Me experience, like from her childhood, but I simply don't have the emotional energy to pour into Christmas. I can't even get the house clean for it; I feel about a month behind in my to-do list--and that doesn't even get around to the Christmas 'to-do' stuff. I'm still trying to get the Fall yard clean up done. I work full-time, too. So, every year I feel like a terrible selfish mother for breaking my oldest daughter's heart. My youngest daugther's birthday is Dec 23, and she is an atheist, and resents lots of Christmas decorations. She feels like it really takes away from her birthday. She would like it if no decorations or other Christmas stuff happened till after her birthday, and maybe only in one room of the house. So there is also her whole set of expectations regarding me creating her birthday experience. I always feel horrible for always disappointing them both. Thus the desire to just run away and pretend it doesn't exist. Celebrating any of the holidays without my husband and their father is an additional aspect of the whole thing.
I would like Christmas, if only there was someone to help create it. I was shocked as a young mother to discover that 'creating' Christmas was just about the hardest 'work' I ever did. There are very intense expectations, especially from children, totally fostered and exagerated by the commercial jugernaut. If there was someone else to do the hard work of it all: cleaning the house, getting the decorations down from the attic, taking the empty boxes back up, getting the tree in and put up and the lights put on, getting the outside decorations done. getting the inside decorating done, cleaning the kitchen after each holiday foray into baking, etc., helping buy and wrap the presents, planning the activities, then taking all the decorations down and getting them back into the attic, and getting rid of the tree--I would love it and would get into the fun of it if someone else would do the work of it all. I just can't do it. Even thinking about it enough to make the preceeding list is making me feel stressed and exhausted.