Reply #6: Don't let them win [View All]

[LiberalEsto]

I think I can understand some of your feelings. It's been a bad year, a bad 2 months.

This year part of me has wanted to grieve instead of celebrate -- because of the election fraud, the potential destruction of what's left of our democracy, and mainly because of the senseless horror in Iraq.

I decided to try having a decent Yule/Christmas anyway, for the sake of my daughters, who are 18 and 21. Who knows how many more Christmases there will be with all four of us together?

I took the red ribbons off the artificial evergreen wreaths we hang on the windows, and replaced them with blue ones. Then I cut out a couple of white peace dove shapes from an old placemat and attached them to the wreaths. Then I put up a modest string of white mini-lights.

When it came time to write the Annual Holiday Letter, I just couldn't do it. I lost my fulltime job this summer, having worked only 8 months after 13 months of unemployment. Now I'm working again, but very part-time. I went through a severe clinical depression this fall, made worse by the election results. My whole family has been depressed about this.

So I wrote the ranting, raving, cussing holiday letter I really felt like writing - it's titled "Merry F*cking Xmas." I'd have posted it here but didn't know if the moderators would object to the use of the word f*cking (asterisk included) about 30-40 times. That got a lot out of my system, at least temporarily.

Finally I decided to put my disappointment and anger on the back burner for a few days, just to have a mental and physical break. There's plenty of opportunity in January to be as furious as I want to be.

To my surprise, Yule and Christmas went very well. No family arguments! Yesterday we were getting the Sunday after Christmas blues, and Dave was visiting his dad in NJ, so the girls and I decided to have a British-style afternoon tea as a change of pace, and it was a lot of fun.

I am not going to let those Xtian psychos take my holidays away from me... or tell me how to celebrate them.