Keith Milne
By Keith C. Milne
I can still remember a time when I was likely more excited by Christmas than the average kid! All of my friends, and my sisters and I thought Christmas was utter magic! The magic that I felt from Christmas was right up there with the magic I felt after seeing a quarter in the bottom of the glass jar upon waking in the morning where I had left my tooth for the tooth fairy, or seeing the movie Mary Poppins for the first time. It seems almost impossible to me that at that early time in my life, I actually looked forward to the short days of December because December was “Christmas Month!” at least in my mind.
So, there I was happily cruising along as a kid, playing army, riding my bike, playing hide-and-seek, and all the other fun stuff that kids do. Having lots of fun, especially at holidays! Back then Christmas, meant gifts, and lights, and the smell of pine from the Christmas trees! The sounds of bells, and carolers, and church choirs. The smells and tasting of baked cookies and other goodies. Christmas, sometimes bringing with it bright cards in the mail, sometimes with money inside of them, was KING of all of the holidays!
Then one year my Mother decided she couldn’t handle life any longer–at Christmas–and my sisters and I had to move to my father’s cramped studio apartment on short notice on Christmas day. That year, my sisters and step-father and I tried to have a normal “Christmas morning as a family,” then late in the day our father came to get us. Little did I know all those years ago that Christmas as I had formerly known it would never be the same again after that.
When I grew a little older, I moved out when I was 17, and I struggled financially like I never had before in my life to make it on my own. I had no idea, yet, that my early dark Christmas experience was the beginning of something that would haunt me at varying levels of intensity each and every year at Christmas ever since!
Unfortunately, like so many others in the world, some of the worst things I’ve experienced in my life have happened in the Fall or around or just after Christmas, and their memories have made getting giddy with holiday joy, wearing an ugly sweater for fun, or even simply decorating the house at Christmas VERY difficult for me at different times in my life.
No matter how much I feel I’m ready for “this year’s season” of processing feelings around some of my Christmas’s of the past that still haunt me a bit, or other things that have happened in the Fall, the heaviness comes, like it or not.
Luckily, the effects have lessened significantly over the years, at least the issues surrounding my early dark experiences at Christmas have, now the heaviness is more of a generalized feeling of dread for mankind as a whole.
To be writing this now, all these years later, I have realized that even all those years ago when I was still a young man, Christmas was largely already warped and getting more and more about who is getting and giving what to whom, and nothing much beyond that.
Growing up in California, USA it’s not hard at all to know people who are “well to do” and who like going all out as Christmas time. I always hated seeing others receive cars, boats, motorcycles, and vacations for gifts at Christmas! REALLY?! Give me a break! That is NOT the average American Christmas and it always struck me in a negative way. Getting a real car for Christmas was a far cry from getting a new pair of shoes or a new pair of slippers or a bottle of cologne, and it just bugged me, because it wasn’t in the spirit of the Christmas that I grew up with and come to learn to believe in, which was a blend of shopping, decorating, gifts, food, dressing up, best manners, and going to church to say Happy Birthday to Jesus. Nothing over the top like buying someone a car.
Over the decades, I have in the past felt the sting and agony of being alone at Christmas. I have been too poor to give gifts to others and felt really bad about that. I have experienced feeling envy about what other people received for Christmas that I could never have afforded to buy for someone else, nor would I ever expect to receive a similar gift.
I have been humiliated when I have bought gifts for people attending a Christmas gathering, even when I could barely make ends meet, and then I had to sit and watch as everyone else did a gift exchange, while in-between each gift being opened I had to hear another apology about them not being sure about buying me one because no one thought to buy me one.
I have even witnessed gift buying expenses determined by ranking of friends and of family where folks who mean the most to the giver are the ones who received the most gifts and had the most money spent on them.
The most audacious Christmas experience has been my own mother giving me gifts or sending me cards, refusing to respect my wishes to not be given any cards or gifts and, instead, tells me that, as my mother, she needed to give her son something at Christmas and that she was “taking care of herself” in order to satisfy HER NEED to buy certain people gifts at Christmas, her son being one of them, whether he likes it or not!
I have analyzed this issue pretty much to death over the years, and have managed to put things into better perspective regarding the past, and forgiven people in my own heart for the damage they have done on their own personal quest towards . . . ? . . . ? . . . ?
My former feeling of dread around Christmas pertaining to personal matters, while having moved more into the shadows over time, seems to have simultaneously gathered additional armament. My heaviness around Fall and Christmas is no longer a heaviness associated with only my own personal history around my past, but has evolved into more of a feeling of dread and concern for the future of humankind!
I know it sounds a little wacky, but I feel this additional weight now because I am keenly aware of the true toxicity of our toys (PFAS/PFOS), and the ultimate burden on all of Earth’s ecosystems in order to continue supporting an entire holiday system that, while providing much needed reasons to get together with others, was harnessed and exploited in order to make as much money as possible in as short a time period as possible.
Christmas has not just warped into an enormous capitalistic monster that has managed to somehow perfectly merge a so called celebration of “the birth of Jesus Christ” with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and 30% off Christmas sales! NO, CHRISTMAS WAS ALWAYS THAT MONSTER IN AMERICA. And, I think for me, therein lies the core of the problem. Christmas has been reduced to a 30% off sale for shopping and overeating and it’s all about stuff and stuffing oneself.
There seems to be barely anything left that even remotely resembles any type of Jesus focus at Christmas these days. Hell, there really wasn’t much left even a mere 30 years ago! Nothing any longer about the original intent of Christmas. True religious inflection only occupies a minority role in most households now. Capitalism is King, and eats idealists like me as an appetizer.
For me, having to witness the absolutely gross material consumption by consumers every year, knowing that in a few short years most of that plastic STUFF will be adding enormously to the six known trash gyres in the world’s oceans, and to the world’s landfills, while it is also slowly poisoning us with micro-plastics is a fact getting harder for me to swallow every year.
It is painful for me to watch so many people frantically shopping, even those who cannot afford to be buying anything extra now, or ever for that matter. They succumb to the societal pressure to shop and give to others just like anyone else, but they don’t have the money. So they just plunk down the plastic and charge the purchase on their credit cards whenever needed or wanted, while paying 18% or higher interest on the unpaid balance, some of which is leftover from last year’s Christmas extravaganza, all in order to ensure that they, too are into Christmas!
Their big shopping cart and giant bags full of booty are proof positive that they are one of the happy Christmas people, faithful servants to the holiday spirit, dutifully ready, willing, and often wanting to throw caution to the wind if necessary!
Christmas takes center stage as the whole world’s perfect excuse to just forget about how their own personal debt becomes their real-time economic enslavement, anything at all about climate change, or anything about being poisoned by all the plastic in the world, or how they’re going to pay their rent next month. Screw it! All they want to do is have a great Christmas just like they used to when they were little.
Christmas and other holidays are just socially constructed reasons for you to spend money in order to prove that you care about others! It completely embraces and enables the marriage between religion and capitalist endeavor. Religion trains people to be obedient, compliant, quiet, humble, faithful people who should feel guilty about any significant deviations from normative convention. It basically trains then to be compliant followers or sheep.
Once adequately indoctrinated by the church and the public and private school systems, the sheep are ripe and ready to be used by capitalists who harness the power of all that conformity, and use holidays and life events as reasons to celebrate, attend funerals, mourn, or reward one another, and we are trained that showing how much we care, means demonstrating it by playing by all of the rules that, co-incidentally cost a small fortune to play by. We are trained to believe and literally buy into the idea that in order to pay our respects, apply for the job, attend a business meeting and the like, that we now need to be dressing a certain way (clothing purchase needed or wanted), or show our care by maybe sending flowers (weddings, funerals, births, romance), or by buying gifts (for any reason you can think of), by traveling to be there for “the event” (ticket and concession and hotel and rental car and dining out, CHA-CHING!), by dining out, and all of the other “appropriate” and socially sanctioned activities that are now able to happen due to the lubrication provided by the infusion of lots of money.
Some of the truths that I have uncovered over the years regarding Christmas essentially boils down to the following:
- The World does not give a damn about my childhood traumas.
- The World does not care one iota how I feel about Christmas and never has.
- The World will NEVER give up or really modify Christmas in any significantly meaningful or spiritually improved way at this point, it will forever mainly be about gluttony in all ways.
- Everyone needs to do the best they can in dealing with Christmas and find their own way of handling it. It is not easy, and never has been in my life. Go figure!
- Make Christmas yours! If you love buying a bunch of stuff and can afford it or don’t mind being in debt up to your ears in order to own or buy all of the trinkets and toys and gadgets and devices, then go for it! If you choose to buy less, buy nothing at all, or help out at a soup kitchen, then fine, and hooray for you!
- Just like short days are simply more darkness then light in a 24 hour cycle, it doesn’t last forever, and neither does Christmas.
- Christmas has become all about “STUFF,” and when hasn’t it been? I now try to buy less over all, buy local when possible, and always recycle whatever can be recycled.
- It is annoying to me that we all drive like maniacs and practically mow each other down while driving in our cars close to Christmas, but then we act all polite at the party we attend, or at work once there. Is it even fair that we’re supposed to respond happily to the bell ringer at the Salvation Army Pot in front of Walmart after just surviving numerous road rage incidents getting there? And, the same can be said for our return trip, after witnessing the worst behavior from people practically ready to fist-fight over cheap, near-future ocean gyre junk from China!
- There is way too much emphasis on perfection around Christmas this time of year and around this celebration in general.
- Your best bet in December is to slow down, spend less, and to learn to be kind all the time not just at Christmas!
Additionally, it is quite apparent that there is no one AT ALL interested in doing anything truly different with Christmas, and this has been across decades! Don’t think for a minute that you’re going to be able to actually have a far more traditional, less expensive, low key Christmas without all the buying and excess. Don’t think that you’ll have a chance in hell of skipping Christmas either! Trust me, the world will not let you!! After numerous attempts at different times in my life to do just that, I have begrudgingly surrendered and now take the path of least resistance: I go with the flow, doing what I can every year to just get through it all intact. Yep, I buy and receive presents, decorate my house, and participate in family Christmas gatherings, and have actually become better with it–but on the same level as, or similar to, me finally adjusting to daylight savings time changes twice per year. 🙁
But if you have similar ambitions to try and skip Christmas (and still feel good inside) then, by all means, take your shot! I wish you well with that. What ever Christmas is for you or what ever you want it to be every year, I wish for you to be able to find a way to make it as enjoyable as you can for yourself.
There are a lot of people in the world who have a really hard time this time of year for a multitude of reasons. Feeling heavy inside when the whole world around you keeps screaming at you to be happy and to enjoy Christmas is tough, but doable. Besides, happiness is a state of mind, and heart, and comes from within, and is also achievable all of the time.
Your feelings of goodness and happiness, or your desire to give is never something that you or others only need to think about at Christmas! Experiment! Try making each day like Christmas, at least in some small way.
Crying over consumer goods not received is a most arrogant, capitalistic, immature, and extremely American perspective that I feel some shame about. As I have become wiser over time, it is hard for me to not become horrified at how spoiled and petty so many people seem at Christmas, or most of the time, and how petty and contrived the whole holiday itself seems.
Christmas has largely morphed into a holiday focused on excess and consumption mostly of a bunch of plastic crap that no one really needs to begin with, all while millions of other people in the world have no real reason to be happy outside of still being alive, because they don’t have enough to eat, have no running water, and no vaccinations against COVID-19 and other diseases.
How can this even be?
How sick and selfish!
How arrogant!
How spoiled and entitled!
How utterly imbalanced!
Where is the evolution of the spiritual aspect of our lives?
Perhaps it was discarded with our Christmas trash at some point, and now lies somewhere buried deep in the bottom muck and leachate of our local landfill.
Here’s hoping you manage to, somehow, make the most of what you choose to do or not do this Christmas!!
