BONUS Holiday Episode

This is a bonus episode about the holidays, what makes it difficult, and hopefully something to lift our spirits and give us hope in what is a hard time for many people.
Halloween is over. Holiday decorations and Christmas stuff have been on the shelves for a couple months now. Most of us have some mixed feelings about the weeks and months ahead. For some of us, Christmas was magical when we were growing up, full of wonder and surprise. We grow up and that magic fades for a lot of reasons. Life gets hard and busy and messy, but we still long for, hope for a spark of those moments to break into our lives during this season. Sometimes we try so hard to make it happen, to create the magic, for ourselves or for our children that we end up with just stress and anxiety.
For others, the holiday season just serves as a reminder of so many things that are wrong or broken. It’s a reminder of the people that are missing from the dinner table for one reason or another, the people we have lost, those who were taken by tragedies, or diseases, or just time, those who left by suicide, those who are lost in their addictions. No matter what happened, there is an absence that lingers in the air whether we talk about it or not.
For some this time that is idealized as one of welcome and belonging feels more like rejection and loneliness. We don’t live up to the expectations of our families or loved ones in some way or another and we feel acutely our differences and our unwelcome. We long for connection, but find instead isolation and heartbreak.
For some of us maybe it doesn’t feel so tragic, but we are uncomfortable. We feel uneasy with the materialism of the season. We can’t afford the kind of season that our kids have come to expect. We’re worried about money, but don’t want it to ruin the festivities. We don’t know how to respond when our relative inevitably says something offensive or that makes us uncomfortable. We are tired of listening to it, but don’t want to pick a fight.
For these and so many reasons we can feel like we are hanging by a thread during this time. The smallest thing might unleash emotions in a torrent of tears or obscenities. We can feel fragile and unsure of what to do. We hope that we can at least survive, get through the worst of it, and try to forget about it until next year.
Maybe there are some things we can do to try and make the holidays a little better, one small step at a time, with realistic expectations.
I want to share a story that might help. It’s called The Christmas Shoes… just kidding… that’s a terrible story and very problematic. Sorry, not sorry, if you really like that story, but maybe that’s a topic for another episode…
I have found some solace in the story of Santa Claus… No, not that guy on the Coca-Cola can… not the Miracle on 34th Street guy either… not even the Kurt Russel version from The Christmas Chronicles… that one was kind of fun though.
No… I’m talking about Saint Nicholas. The real historical figure who lived during the third century in a village called Patara in what is now the country of Turkey. That’s right the real life Santa Claus was also a Middle Eastern guy who looked a lot more like the bad guys in most 80s action movies than Ed Asner or Tim Allen.
“His wealthy parents, who raised him to be a devout Christian, died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young. Obeying Jesus’ words to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor,” Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known for his generosity to those in need and his love for children.”
When I had kids, I wanted to find ways to make the holiday season more meaningful for us as a family. One of the things I decided to do was tell them about the real historical Saint Nicholas. It was my way of getting out of the question about what to tell them about Santa Claus.