Editing The Expectations Out Of Christmas
By: Alexandra Naughton
Tags: Capitalism, Christmas, Consumerism, Family, Tradition

Okay, so, Christmas. The holidaze.

I was trying to think of some good, raunchy stories that have happened around the holidays. I was racking my brain. I thought of some times where I got really drunk on Christmas and did something wacky or inappropriate, like the time my cousin Siobhan beat me at Tetris and was gloating and I was acting like a sore loser and her sister-in-law called me a sore loser and I said, “I don’t even know you.”

But like, that’s not funny, and it made everyone really uncomfortable, and later that night I got blackout wasted and sang along to a Fergie song in the car with my friend and my sister and my cousin Charlie who dropped me off at my friend’s apartment and went out to a club without me because I puked in the hallway.

That’s also not funny, and is just a part of why I don’t drink anymore.

I want to talk about Christmas, and what it has meant to me over the years. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday: because it’s about acknowledging death and accepting it and celebrating being alive—in its essence. It’s what you make it, and all I ever expect for Halloween is putting on the costume I spent months conceptualizing and going out with friends.

Christmas is about love and family and generosity, but it’s really easy to forget that with how the holiday has been commercialized and stripped of its meaning with department store sales and discount TVs and the pressures that so many people feel to spend outside their means to make the people they love happy.

The capitalist aspects of the holidays has always repelled me. Even when I believed in Santa, which I did up until age 10, my letters to the North Pole were asking for world peace, which my parents thought was admirable and gave me a peace sign patch for my backpack. I looked up to Lisa Simpson, and I wanted to be altruistic like her. Opening up presents and giving gifts felt empty to me. A saying my dad uses often around the holidays is, “Christmas is about two things: expectations and disappointments.” It’ pretty true, when you think about it. I guess if you’re focusing on the giving and receiving of gifts as the point of Christmas it’s easy to get wrapped up in the anticipation and the inevitable anti-climax.

I just used the word “climax.” That’s about as sexy as this essay gets. Whatever.

My favorite part of the holidays are the little traditions, the simple yet special celebrations that take place only during this time of year. I would get emotional while singing Christmas carols. I was in the choir in school and in church because I love singing, but the holiday songs felt more special to sing, and I was usually pretty excited when winter rolled around every year. I remember tearing up while doing “Carol of the Bells” in the 6th grade. A girl standing next to me on the auditorium stage said, “Wow you really got into that.”

A photo that my sister posted on Instagram the other day. This looks like Christmas 1994. I’m on the left, Bridget is on the right. Taken at the Cherry Hill Mall in New Jersey.

My family is big into the holidays. A little less so these days, at least with the decorations, but it’s tradition in our family to make a ton of food and invite every family member over to celebrate. We would usually spread the parties out over several weeks, hosting dinners and traveling by car to see relatives and friends who lived further away and were hosting their own parties.

My dad says, “Christmas is about two things: expectations and disappointments.”

I remember watching A Nightmare Before Christmas at my Uncle PJ’s house followed by a dance party after dinner and my sister Bridget and I performing a dance from the musical Cats where Bridget accidentally did a backroll into the Christmas tree during our routine and then sleeping over and making my Aunt Stella tell us stories about Christmas when she was little until the wee hours and driving to a church nearby the next morning to look at a lifesize nativity scene that was still up even though it was a week or two after Christmas.

We had a lot of fun traditions surrounding Christmas when I was growing up. We would decorate the house together — just breaking out the box of ornaments for the tree and doodads and garlands to string up the bannister and archways was exciting. We would select a Christmas mixtape that my dad made on cassette to listen to while decorating the tree, taking turns to pick out ornaments, my sister and I competing over who got to pick which one.

We would go out on drives around different neighborhoods in South Philly to look at the lights people put on their houses and communities that got together to decorate thematically. Our parties at home were always a good time, as well, at least before the adults got too intoxicated. There are too many fun things we did as a family to get into too much detail here, but we were always playing games like charades, singing karaoke, getting mad at my dad who would walk through the room where we were playing Trivial Pursuit and say the answer to whatever question even though he wasn’t playing the game.

In my senior year of high-school my Halloween costume was “a 1950s housewife hosting a Christmas party.” That was my costume. No one really understood, definitely no one knew what I was, but I thought I looked amazing. I wore a vintage cocktail dress and an apron and I carried around a cookie tray with cookies on it all day. In a way, it was a subversive Halloween costume, like a lot of my Halloween costumes tend to be.

I enjoy dressing up in a type of drag, illustrating a certain kind of idealized femininity without commentary. Without any irony. I was a nun for Halloween in the 9th grade. Not a pregnant nun or a slutty nun, just a nun.

But without getting too off topic, I was excited for Christmas that year. My boyfriend at the time really loved Christmas and his excitement rubbed off on me. I dug out the old mix-tapes that my dad made of holiday music, and created my own mix of songs on a cassette as a gift for my boyfriend at the time. I made a fruitcake from scratch that year, a good one, with dried mango and dried pineapple. I partook in a Festivus event, with a pole and everything, with an airing of grievances and a feats of strength and everything. It felt fun to participate in the traditions and make new ones.

Then I was in college. And then nine years ago I moved out here. I wasn’t around my family. I haven’t celebrated Christmas with my mom and dad and sister in years. I’ve gone to other family member’s celebrations: my cousin Siobhan lives in Los Angeles now and the past few years I’ve gone down there to spend the holiday with her and other family, and we would do fun things like bake cookies and cook food and take walks to look at the lights on other people’s houses, but it wasn’t the same.

It felt weird for me to sit around the tree on Christmas morning and watch my relatives give each other gifts and see the disappointment when they got something close to what they wanted but not exactly what they wanted. Especially when I had so little to give. I make handmade gifts, like collages or cards or mixtapes or cakes that I bake. It’s not a lot, but I do try to put thought into it.

I’m trying to figure out my disconnect, why I started feeling so Scroogely about Christmas. I feel like writing this piece has been this huge soul-searching journey, and this is something I just figured out because I was asked to do this storytelling thing about the holidays. To be honest, I haven’t given much thought to Christmas for a very long time, but I think what happened is I got older.

I became an adult, and becoming an adult did not turn out like I thought it would. I thought I would have more by now. I didn’t think I would still be struggling this much. I felt inferior because of what I don’t have. I compared myself to others, and everyone else seemed to have it better. They seemed to be having more fun. They were able to fly back to visit their families. They were able to buy things I wasn’t able to buy, and because of that they had people to make memories with and share traditions with. Is this making sense. I mean, it doesn’t really make sense, it’s my own personal neurosis and I’m trying to explain it. I isolated myself and let myself get wrapped up in insecurities and feeling overwhelmed by things that at my core I do not care about.

I didn’t think I would still be struggling this much. I felt inferior because of what I don’t have.

I’m going home for Christmas this year and I am excited about it. I’m excited to hang out in my childhood home and bake cookies with my mom and watch movies with my dad and get dressed up with my sister and spend time with family and friends and just relax. I lost my job in November and it actually has been a blessing in disguise. Because of that job I was never able to take a real vacation, I was constantly on-call. Even if I wasn’t in the office, even if I did travel cross-country to see my folks, I would still have to take calls from my boss and drop whatever I was doing to placate him.

I’m moving back with my folks soon, actually, at the end of January, and I couldn’t be happier about the decision. It’s not like I ever forget, but writing this out made me realize how much I appreciate my family.

I guess I never really lost the spirit of Christmas. It was in me the whole time! I have love and kindness in me, and I enjoy doing things to make my friends and family happy, even if it’s something as little as making a homemade card or constructing a playlist or keeping the party going with a David Bowie singalong.

Christmas, like everything, is what you make it, and it can be fun, it can be wonderful, you’ve just got to bypass the expectations and disappointments.