“I don’t like Christmas”

“I just.. I don’t like Christmas” – I said, as the Christmas music kept playing on the back and my co-workers stared at me silently.
I said it. Meaning every single word.

Believe it or not, there is some people out there who do not enjoy the holiday seasons. Maybe they don’t believe in the religious part of Christmas, or the commercial part of Christmas or they don’t even like the universal ‘love and peace’ values of it. But in all honesty, I think the general dislike of Christmas is way more linked with memories and associations than with plain dislike towards the season.
But let me take you back, before that rainy day with Christmas music and Grinchness in the air.

I used to be one of the biggest supports of Christmas, heck, I still am. I love everything about it, I love the food, the colors, the weather, the people, the music… everything. But you see, no matter where I’ve been and what has happened in my life, I always come back to a basic common root: I spend Christmas with my parents. It doesn’t matter if my mom spent a lot of months away from home, or I decided to go to school 5000 miles away from them, on Christmas day? We are sitting together at the table, listening to the Rat Pack’s Christmas Album as the house smells like Christmas bread and chocolate. It’s perfect.

But not this year.
This year, I will be sitting in someone else’s table. With someone else’s parents. At someone else’s home. Now, you can call me a whiner, but in all honesty, Christmas was all we had.
My family is very small and not very close to each other. It was always a struggle to even feel like a family at all, but Christmas made everything different.
For one single day, we were a family. A picture-perfect family. With the jokes, the hugs, the good food and the spending time together. So, yeah, spending Christmas with anyone else besides my family is extremely painful.
Extremely. Painful.

And so I became bitter. I started to despise the Christmas music, the Christmas lights, even the early snow. All the things that I normally love. Because each of those things reminded me of my parents, just like people leaving during thanksgiving break remind me of the fact that I won’t be with my parents until at least 6 more months. Not even a quick weekend visit. A Sunday lunch. Nothing. You can tell me I am wrong, and I will believe you, but I assure you that, just like me, 99.2% of people who claims to ‘hate/dislike Christmas’ have something similar to this going on. Maybe some bad memories, or good memories that are no longer there, or the absence of memories at all. So I understand, I understand the Grinch mentality because for a split second I almost adopted it.
But then I remembered one thing, I am completely free to think differently. My mind has been renewed to change the direction of my thoughts whenever these thoughts are not good or worthy… So I decided to instead of being bitter and sad I will stop being sad and start being awesome instead*, I will be happy for those who are able to spend holidays with their loved ones, and thankful that I have parents to miss that love me and miss me too! Thankful that I have friends and ‘family’ here that make sure to remind me that I am also loved and miss here! and Thankful for a Father that  is always there to make me smile and remind me how beautiful life is, even when you are stuck in a small town of Kentucky, with nothing else than a good cup of hot chocolate and a great folk album 🙂

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. -Philippians 4:8

Early Happy Holidays 🙂 

*I couldn’t help the comic relief.