Why I'm leaning into a sad Christmas, with all the fixings

In this personal reflection, Shelley Chase writes about embracing grief during the holidays.

It's unavoidable. The Christmas activity schedule is stretched out before you like an apocalyptic advent calendar. Somehow you have to get through to New Year's Day and a tsunami of emotions, with Macaulay Culkin like wiliness.

You've recently lost a loved one. Be it a death or a departure, your "person" is no longer celebrating Christmas with you this year.

Doesn't Christmas know that you are barely hanging on, without having to hang out by mistletoe alone? Maybe you are grieving a parent and with it their shortbread cookie recipe that signalled the season of giving. Perhaps you are grieving a child and Christmas is simply unthinkable.

I've been on this sleigh ride myself the last nine months, and while I am no grief counsellor, I do know grief.

My remarkable mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last January and would leave our storyline courageously, just nine weeks later.

All the memories of Christmas and her are tangled up like those impossible twinkle lights in the basement. I can't separate them this Christmas. So I won't.

An avalanche of loss changes everything. Compound that with pandemic exhaustion and you are watching your own heart shrink three sizes so it doesn't hurt. You are in survival mode and understandably so Mr. Grinch. Me too.

Grief, however, doesn't move on when the dollar store swaps out the Halloween decor for gingerbread kits. It settles right on in and puts its feet up on your kitchen table and cracks open a clementine.

If the next few days look like death by a thousand paper snowflake cuts, then read on dear puffy red-nosed friend. You are not alone in your personal North Pole isolation camp.

The urge to avoid all merriment is strong. You must cancel Bing Crosby and seasonal beverages at all costs, right? But will it help ease your pain and overwhelming sense of loss?

No.

Because now you have FOMO, and avoiding Christmas is becoming a full-time guerrilla mission with people avoiding you, and it's literally snowballing. So stop. Just stop.

Stay with me here. What if you Love Actually lean into it? Like actually acknowledge it?

What if your loss is what your Christmas is about this year and not the perfectly curated merriment that Instagram would have you believe?

What if you have a sad Christmas, with all the fixings?

You may be surprised at how many people have sadness they want to share at Christmas too.

December has always been melancholy though hasn't it ?

While religion is the base of today's celebration, the pagan roots are strong, as are Norse Gods, tricksters and even ghost stories. Christmas has morphed for thousands of years, and it's never been a given that everything happens as it always has or that every Christmas event is happy. That is the stuff of advertising executives.

Did you know that the holiday as we celebrate it today didn't really begin until the 1800s in North America? Santa didn't start stuffing stockings here until almost 1900.

Christmas is a broad concept globally, and many events have shaped it over centuries. Whether you're a person of faith or not, this is a great time to welcome the lighting of candles in memory of the person who lost, and to shed tears alone or with loved ones. Crying is a celebratory act.

So is sacrifice. Make a picture altar, make meals for your departed or refrain from consumption altogether and remember them by the glow of tree lights.

Spend time planning your long winter's hibernation. Ask Santa for new bedding and pyjamas or a hotel night stay to rest, during your Christmas grief.

Through the years we all will be together, but gradually we won't be. The fates don't allow it.

So what else can you do to embrace pain at Christmas? Well, how 'bout inflicting more pain?

How about a polar swim or at least a Nordic spa day? Some studies say cold water reboots our system. You have been through shock, so maybe another shock is what the doctor ordered? (Don't try this unless you are fit to do so)

Try a sad Christmas movie marathon or write cards to all those you have lost and have a bonfire with them, decorate a fallen tree in the forest with natural items, purchase a mass if you are spiritual, for anywhere in the world, or simply say their name aloud. Honour them and honour your grief this Christmas.

Moving through and with grief and holding space for it, may mean tears and anger at the most inopportune times and even at Christmas. Feigning joy when joy is not present is unnecessary. Suffering is a season unto itself.

We are all a little tender this year, but you can lean into it. Through the years we all will be together, but gradually we won't be. The fates don't allow it. We will, however, all muddle through somehow with those who remain and slowly once more we will have ourselves a merry little Christmas.

Merry Christmas, Mom.