I imagine when you look at this title you might think this is going to be a sad and depressing story. On the contrary, I want to express how much joy I feel during my "lonely Christmas".
I have been on my own for four years now. My son lives with me part time but I do spend a fair amount of time completely alone. I am ok with this though. It doesn't cause me any stress. I believe my childhood in Montreal prepared me for this. There was a fair amount of hostility towards the English during the sixties. The FLQ wanted Quebec to separate from the rest of Canada. Mailboxes were blowing up all over the city as a protest of some sort. I can vividly remember attempting to play with the French kids and having a pail of sand dumped on my head and being pinned against a brick wall by a girl on a bike until my leg bled. So I learned to amuse myself on my own. I lived in my imagination. I played on the train tracks and in a deserted factory. (No one cared about that kind of thing back then) I constantly wrote poems on little scraps of paper. And the teachers at my school gave me a special dispensation to use the high school library so I spent a lot of time there. So being alone is something I am Ok with.
In my "former life" I used to go to great lengths to prepare for Christmas. I decorated for days. I baked 10 different kinds of cookies and squares. I shopped months in advance trying to find suitable, reasonably priced gifts for my family. But as the years passed I started to get tired and frustrated at how much effort went into Christmas. One year I discovered that the top half of our large Christmas tree would fit into the base and therefore I only had to decorate half a tree so I starting doing that. I baked less. Who needs all those calories? I made the suggestion of pulling names out of a hat and only exchanging gifts with one family member instead of many but that was nixed. I was attempting to lessen the "holiday load". Typically this falls on the "moms" of the family. Moms do all the shopping, all the decorating, all the baking, all the meal prep, all the clean up, all the un-decorating etc etc etc. It is exhausting. Unless you have had to do this task for many, many years I don't think people realize how taxing it can be. My Mother in Law discovered I could cook a turkey back in the 80's and from that moment on it became my job. Mind you, she cooked other dishes to go with it, but every holiday you could see Facebook posts about how much I hated ramming stuffing up a turkey's ass. Do I miss sitting at a long table attempting to converse with relatives that I rarely ever see? Not really.
When I moved out in 2020 I realized that I couldn't bring all my millions of Christmas decorations with me. My small apartment had no space to store them and no room for a tree. I began to analyze what it was that I REALLY loved about Christmas and I came to the conclusion that is was basically the decorations: the lights, the sparkly things, the shimmer and shine!!! Things that looked plain and ugly the rest of the year looked glorious at Christmas. BUT just because I had no room for all these trinkets and lights doesn't mean I can't go out and enjoy other people's! Yes occasionally I will feel a pang when I see a picture online of something that was mine, but I remind myself that IT IS NOT IMPORTANT! What is important is that I am in a safe, comfy apartment with an incredible view and I am AT PEACE!
So that is what I wish for everyone reading this...PEACE. Don't turn Christmas into a stressful, expensive nightmare. Be content with simple things. I raised two kind, considerate children who will visit me over the holidays and I am perfectly happy with that.
Merry Christmas everyone,
no matter how many or how few people you are spending it with.
