The Briar Philosopher - The Thirteenth Day of Christmas

Well, by the time most of you will be reading this, Christmas Day will have come and gone. The stores already have Valentine's candy on the shelves and we’ll all be starting to think about those New Year's resolutions that usually don’t last much longer than it takes to come up with them. People will be taking down trees this week and packing away ornaments, stuffing trash bags full of wrapping paper and bows, and putting away gift bags for reuse next year. The excitement or dread or whichever way you might feel about the holiday will have subsided and we’ll all get on with it. Many of us will try to carry the idea of Christmas with its kindness and giving into the new year and many of us will just be so glad its over that we’ll stuff our emotions right in there with the ornaments and not want to look at them again until next year. 

I think this week in between the celebration and the beginning of a new year might be one of the hardest weeks of the year for quite a few people. After all the build-up, many folks are left feeling a little empty. And after all the visiting and company many people will feel more than a little lonely as life settles back into a more normal routine. There will be those who will be thinking about the loved ones who weren’t around this year and there will be those who will second guessing everything they did and said during the holiday. Did they get the right gift for someone? Should they have said such and such to so and so? Were they left out of some invitation to somewhere or something on purpose? Why didn’t so and so call? Should I have called so and so?  

All of those feelings and responses are normal and to be expected. There is so much to do and so many things to juggle and keep straight. We put so many expectations on ourselves and there are so many things happening that the mind can just get a little overloaded. As adults, we don’t allow ourselves to have a melt down in the middle of it all, fall apart, cry over stupid things, scream out the tension and move beyond it. 

Christmas with our Grandson Ben a few years ago was an example of how allowing ourselves such expression of emotion might not be a bad idea. Ben was five years old at the time.  He had a wonderful Christmas and, as is often the case with children, there were three Christmas celebrations to attend with three different sets of people. By the afternoon he had just had too much and had a complete and total emotional melt down because a squishy toy he had received popped. It was the end of the world and he was completely inconsolable, crying and screaming for about 12 minutes.  I just kept saying, “go ahead and cry it out” because there was nothing that was going to sooth him. He didn’t want to be soothed. After a while I suggested that maybe we should go and he came around and asked us to stay and play awhile. He was ok again and we played with toys for another hour or so. Before the meltdown he had been over the top excited, hyperactive, jumping from one thing to the next like a whirling dervish.  After the meltdown he seemed to have his mind back and was calmer and could focus more easily on one thing at a time.  None of it really had anything to do with the squishy. He’d just reached his capacity.

We all reached our capacity more than once over the holiday, I have no doubt. Some of us even snuck in a little cry in secret or “took a walk” to scream out the input overload or frustration from juggling too much and being over stimulated.  These things didn’t stop having an affect on us just because we got older we just don’t seem to consider it acceptable to melt down in front of other people. We have a façade of calm and competence to maintain but I can’t help but think that it might be better to just let each other see what’s really happening inside when things get to be too much. When we’re all pretending to be ok through it all nobody feels like it’s ok to be not ok. Maybe if we would allow one another to see how ok we’re not we would all feel less isolated and less alone with our feelings and maybe, just maybe, we’d figure out a better way to get through such holidays. Maybe we would simplify things a little and get back to the important part of simply being together and showing our love for one another. Love comes in many forms and I think one of them is allowing ourselves and others to be human. So, if you want to melt down and cry for a minute while you’re packing all those decorations and emotions away, go ahead and do it. It’s been a wonderful week but it has been a hard one in a lot of ways for a lot of people, including me, including you, including all of us. I’ll get the tissues. Go ahead and cry it out.