The Need to Switch Up the Holidays

I continue to think about the holidays, and how to shake them up so that joy is found. How do we plan this festive season, filling in ‘the empty chair’ that is the elephant in the room?

We are taught to honor our children, especially during the holidays. So, each year I think of creative ways that Zane would appreciate to celebrate his energy and his love he had for this life. His birthdays are easier.  We have tied ribbons to trees, played stampede games (with prizes), and passed out pay it forward cards. His last birthday I made a ’30 things to do for Zane’ in honor of his 30^th birthday. Christmas seems harder and why is that?

It might be because birthdays seem to be about the individual.  We celebrate the person, who they are, what they did or do and how that makes us feel. Christmas is melancholier. This holiday is promoted about being together and ‘coming home’ and it all working out in the end. All things that are not possible for us. And it is this overall innuendo of what Christmas should be that I think makes it worse than other annual holidays.

If there is truth to this theory, then what can we do to soften it? I think the suggestion of what we do to honor our loved ones plays a different role here. Maybe the past holidays I have tried to ‘bring him home’ too much.  I have his own tree decorated and his culinary favorites forefront at every meal and his gifts (that he should be enjoying) bought and wrapped.  Crazy? Well, I was told to do whatever makes you feel better.  And the truth is, nothing makes me feel better. And that realization, struck me. Hard.

Christmas will always be a holiday that will not, with all its magic, bring me back to any time before Zane was killed. Christmas must become something different. Christmas must be revamped so that I can be present with those that are here and not deaf to their joy because of my own pain. So, I ponder what will I do different.  And whatever I decide to do, Christmas will come and go. And this fact gives me the freedom and the permission to shake it up.