Hacking my sad feelings about Christmas and passing of time
December 8, 2014 12:17 PM   Subscribe

I generally love Christmas, and try to throw myself into it, but it brings up a lot of sad feelings (as I know it does for many people.) Specifically, my partner and I are in a shitty ongoing life situation that I keep hoping will be resolved but isn't, and two songs specifically set it off every year that it isn't resolved. Assuming the ongoing life situation can't be changed, how do I reframe my thinking about Christmas and the passing of time?

The two songs are:

John Lennon asking me 'And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?' in Happy Christmas (War is Over)

Judy Garland singing 'Next year all our troubles will be far away' in 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas' because I always think 'maybe next year our troubles will be over'... and then they're not.

It doesn't help that, partly due to ongoing life situation, my partner doesn't celebrate Christmas with me and my family, and I get really sad about that too. Shitty life situation is putting a lot of our life on hold and for some reason it feels worse at Christmas.

As I said above, assuming I have to leave our lives to the fates, can I reframe how I think about this?
posted by anonymous to Human Relations (20 answers total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: poster's request -- taz

 
Can't you avoid listening to those songs? They suck.
posted by starbreaker at 12:19 PM on December 8, 2014


I wish! They're so sickly, aren't they? I keep hearing them in shopping centres, and sometimes they just pop into my head uninvited :-(
posted by Dorothea_in_Rome at 12:20 PM on December 8, 2014


Shopping centers are easy. You need a device capable of playing music, a good set of headphones, and a depraved indifference to the opinions of strangers. I'd suggest the Trans-Siberian Orchestra if you insist on Christmas music, but a lot of their shit is pretty maudlin as well, and you can only listen to "Christmas Eve (Sarejevo 12/24)" so many times.
posted by starbreaker at 12:27 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Last threadsit I promise, but I shouldn't have focused too much on the music in my question - they set it off, but so do a lot of other traditions - it's more the feelings of time passing and hopelessness they inspire that I'm hoping to hack. Thanks!
posted by Dorothea_in_Rome at 12:31 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Time passes whether you think about it or not. So whenever you start thinking about your shitty life situation, be conscious about changing the narrative.

Instead of "it's been another year and X, Y, and Z are still negatively affecting my life..."
think to yourself "it's been another year and I'm still alive. My partner is still alive. My family is still alive. I have A, B, and C to be thankful for..."
posted by trivia genius at 12:33 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I suggest that a good book would be Get out of your mind and into your life. It addresses the exact problem you're experiencing.
posted by tel3path at 12:38 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


The problem isn't the season or the songs you're hearing, it's this:
My partner and I are in a shitty ongoing life situation that I keep hoping will be resolved but isn't.

You have agency. You have control over your life. What can you do to change this ongoing life situation?

I don't mean to blame you for the situation at all - at all. I was in a very shitty ongoing life situation with a partner myself once, and it was not my fault. There was nothing about the situation that I was causing. But there was something I could do to change the situation. So I did it.

And the thing I did to change the situation was absolutely terrible and terrifying and so, so painful. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. But I did it, and I am so much better off. What I did was I left my "partner" - I left, and it was so rough. But he was abusive and mean and cruel and nothing I did was going to change that, so I left him. And I imagine he is still out there, living his life in tremendous amounts of pain, and probably causing a new girlfriend tremendous amounts of her own pain. I'm not saying that this is your situation - you've not identified the situation in your post, so I am just using my situation as an example. My point is to illustrate that the thing that I had to do was incredibly dramatic and upending and scary but the short term pain was more than worth the long term gain.

What can you do to change the situation? No matter how hard it hurts, no matter how impossible it seems, that is what you need to do. You don't need to avoid specific songs. You need to tackle this situation head-on. That's the only thing that will actually solve your problem.
posted by sockermom at 12:53 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


Give yourself permission to hate Christmas, change the station every time those songs come on, and be moody about the whole thing.

I have a long history with sucky life stuff happening around Christmas. I have weird family life transition shit happening right now that feels especially noticeable when I think about various holiday rituals. And, frankly, I've never been much of a Christmas person in the first place. Sometimes the holidays can feel like this absurd hegemony of forced cheerfulness, and you know what? It's bullshit. You are not required to take part.

Take care of yourself. Do the things that make you happy, and skip the rest. And don't feel compelled to hide your complicated life and complicated feelings behind a cheery holiday mask.
posted by Sara C. at 12:54 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I love Christmas, but it's awful. The pastor at last year's Christmas Eve's service made a large part of the sermon about how Christmas is actually really sad for most adults - we want the perfect Christmas of our childhood, but we can never have it again, and it's hard. My grandma said the same thing, when she was in her fifties. So, this is normal, and for me, it was really good to hear that. Christmas has a lot of pressure and expectations for adults.

This quote helps me: "What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, and hope for the future..." Agnes Pahro.
posted by umwhat at 1:33 PM on December 8, 2014 [18 favorites]


I agree with some of the above that gratitude can be very powerful, even gratitude for little things like not hearing that annoying song today or this coffee or a little snow.

The other thing that I find helpful is just plain ol' distraction. Realizing that I might not be able to change anything about that situation, but I can do something kind for myself (when can I get to the gym?) or loved one (maybe I can complete that chore that my partner dislikes? or get them a silly stocking stuffer?).
posted by ldthomps at 1:44 PM on December 8, 2014


I agree that this isnt really about the season, but your ongoing situation. I'd encourage you to sit with your feelings and beliefs about it and see if there are other angles you could approach it with. Are you really so powerless in this? Is there anything that you could do to change the situation, or your feelings about it? This has been going on for years? Can you bear years more? Or must something give? Or, can you see the positives or the silver linings?

If this really just is something shit you have to go through, i would say just try to surround yourself with comfort and other things precious to you other than your relationship.
If you cant have xmas with your partner, but you can be with your family, make the most of that.
posted by mymbleth at 1:52 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Both "War is Over," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" actually ARE about "sad feelings about Christmas and passing of time," though. Initial versions of "Have Yourself..." were so sad Judy Garland, who certainly knew what it meant to have problems, refused to sing it. Unbelievably, early versions were even WORSE, using the lyric "It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past" which was changed to"Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight." . The song is about being separated from loved ones, possibly permanently. (In the context of Meet Me in St. Louis the father is moving away, and the song debuted in 1944--the troubles and distance resonated for most people affected by WWII. That was not a happy year for Christmas.)

The NPR article referenced above also states that Hugh Martin, one of the writers, hated Christmas later in life : "I'm really upset by Christmas now. I just hate Santa Claus and the jingle bells and reindeer and the wrapped packages and the holiday push. I hate all of that. I just loved it when it was, well, all my life ago, 90 years ago."

In the 1950s, after the war was over, Frank Sinatra asked to change the"Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow," line (always the most wrenching for me) to "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough." He told Martin, "The name of my album is A Jolly Christmas. Do you think you could jolly up that line for me?" Martin's new line was "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough." Martin made several other alterations, changing the song's focus to a celebration of present happiness, rather than anticipation of a better future.

To try to use all this to answer your question, though, I think maybe feeling like you're "supposed to," be happy (and/or that everyone else is happy) is what makes Christmas so much worse. Maybe see those songs as an acknowledgment that other people feel the same way you do?
posted by Violet Hour at 2:25 PM on December 8, 2014 [14 favorites]


It recently occurred to me that a lot of holiday standards were first recorded during WW2. All those songs about being home for Christmas, dreaming of a white Christmas, having oneself a merry little Christmas, etc. are written in a context of the very real possibility that simple pleasures like family holiday traditions are in the past, and the narrator of the song may literally never be home for Christmas again.

So, if it helps, you could imagine that all those schmaltzy holiday songs are really about the wistful troubled questioning you're going through, yourself, and aren't as smug as they tend to come off nowadays.
posted by Sara C. at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I suggest maybe being a little more evasive of Christmas and perhaps a bit more embracing of Advent and of Yule. Advent, to many Christian churches, is a rather muted time of fasting and contemplation leading right up to Christmas eve. Yule is at least partly about celebrating the fact that we have got beyond the solstice, the days are starting to get longer again and we are not necessarily doomed.

So channel the spirit of advent to meditate - and then the spirit of Yule to celebrate getting gradually nearer to Spring. Ignore Christmas until it is right upon you - that is what Scrooge did, after all.
posted by rongorongo at 3:07 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


"Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" is one of the saddest songs in US pop culture. Especially the Judy Garland version, which I remember seeing as the soundtrack to endless TV Sad Christmas E pisodes featuring some character on a bus or a train, alone, cheek pressed up against the glass, going far away from their friends and loved ones, afraid the relationships were irreparable. Please don't feel like there's something wrong with you because this song makes you feel bad. It's awful. It's like a tragic aria about the isolation and longing that comes with deep winter and the social mandate to be happy and celebratory, even when your life is hard and you're unhappy.

John and Yoko's 'Happy Christmas' is, like someone else said, literally about the adult feelings of sadness and longing, specifically about family difficulties and being separated from your loved ones at the holidays. "Happy Christmas, Kyoko," to Yoko's kidnapped, missing daughter, and the self-incriminating"Happy Christmas, Julian," to John's neglected first son. These are both sad, sad, songs, and it's not your fault that they're getting massive corporate radioplay as part of the pressure to spend more money around the holidays.

That being said. A really good hack for me for the feelings of hopelessness and time whirling out of control is Fairytale Of New York. Crank it up, dance to it, laugh so you don't cry.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 4:56 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


Sara C. makes a very good point; much of the body of Christmas song and story is (or could be) about loss. Dickens wrote an essay, "What Christmas is as we grow older," which-- don't read it unless you are feeling very strong. At least, not if you are missing family members or friends.

It's a very melancholy time for me. One thing that makes me feel a little better is giving gifts-- sensible, planned gifts to carefully researched charities but also some of the more feel-good charities of the season. Book drives for children; food drives. The latter, particularly, probably want money more than anything but at this time of year, filling a cart with donations cheers me up.
posted by BibiRose at 5:07 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sorry; I kind of missed your second update. As far as the feelings of hopelessness-- that's what we have New Years resolutions for! Have you got time off from work at year's end? Do a cleaning-purging-feng shui reorganization. Nothing like getting rid of clutter to feel like things are changing. Plan to spend January and February eating healthy; don't drink or smoke and get outdoors. If you want to start those right now, even better.
posted by BibiRose at 5:14 PM on December 8, 2014


Those are really sad songs and I don't think you're alone in feeling sad when you listen to them. For me, I try to turn them around to be happier in my mind (focus on a time when I heard them that makes me really happy to think about). For some of the other songs that I really hate at Christmas (I really, really despise "Baby It's Cold Outside") I make up really terrible lyrics and sing those in my head when I'm out at the shops and can't get away from the 20,000 versions you have to hear in an hour. Making up lyrics that are funny to me helps me deal. I tend toward the sarcastic and irreverent, though, so this may not work for you.
posted by RogueTech at 6:16 PM on December 8, 2014


I chant to myself, "It's just ONE day and then it will be over; It's just ONE day and then it will be over; It's just ONE day and then it will be over..."

And then it's over. Whew.

When we're young, we're so caught up in the holiday thing - the family is big and busy, there are starry-eyed kids waiting for Santa, there's baking to do and Christmas dinner and the tree and all that -

Then we're older and the kids live someplace else and there's no one coming for dinner and no kids now, no point in baking, a tree's not worth the bother - there's even possibly hard feelings between us and those we love - and so

It's just ONE day and then it will be over ...

It's true, you know - it really IS just one day - and then it's over and life goes back to normal.
posted by aryma at 10:33 PM on December 8, 2014


A friend of mine thought it was hilarious to crank up Fairytale of New York the Christmas that my 70 year old dad, who was doing his level best to take everyone with him on his downward spiral, got busted for a DUI and my brother went to bail him out at 1am and take him in.

It was vaguely amusing the first time Friend did the Fairytale of New York thing but it wore thin at about iteration number 3, let alone numbers 5, 6, 7...

Now I get pissed off as soon as I hear the first chord.
posted by small_ruminant at 10:34 PM on December 8, 2014


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