Posted 6:05 PM by Mona V.

Yuletide-al Wave

In our small corner of the world, the Yuletide holidays start as soon as the Halloween decors go down; and end on January 6th, the Feast of the Magi (in my house, the holidays end around February – as that’s approximately the time we get around to getting those blasted Christmas lights off the roof). So as we speak, people within a five hundred-kilometer radius of me have Christmas lists in their pockets and are probably thinking about Christmas dinner.

For years now, the approach of the holidays brings an anxiety I never felt as a child. The year-end events at the office, the shopping for gifts, the decorations to put up, the family reunions, the New Year’s party at my house – all enjoyable, yes; but collectively take their toll on my mental health.

So this year, I vowed to keep things simple.

While I love the comedy of our drunken uncles, I will not host a party this year. We will just have to find other relatives’ houses to thrash … I mean, congregate in. I will control myself from putting up over-elaborate Christmas décor. My children will have to learn that the spirit of Christmas has nothing to do with trees, lights and mistletoes. And shopping for gifts will be an emotional, creative exercise rather than an urgent chore to complete.

I hope that it is in extracting myself from the Christmas pitfalls that I will remember what I should really be celebrating in the first place.