As any student knows, it can be tough navigating the upcoming holiday season of marketing, family time, and festivities. Despite tired brain cells and weakened bank balances, the odds are good that students will bounce back from exams and be able jump into the holiday spirit.
Still, while the holidays are great for some, this time of year can be a remarkable stressor for others. The degree of emotional difficulty around the holidays is unique to each person, each family. The winter break is often riddled with expectations, reflections, and the human tendency to compare themselves to others.
Camosun visual arts student Maddy Knott remembers counting down the days with her advent calendar, making Christmas crafts in school, writing letters to Santa.
“Now my weeks before Christmas consist of writing letters to the government for loan applications, counting down the days until my exams, and, fortunately, still making crafts in school,” she says. “I just find the anticipation of the whole idea [of Christmas] becomes lost on me as I get older. I still do stuff with my family and enjoy being able to spend time with them; it’s just not like it used to be.”
HURT FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Camosun psychology instructor David Reagan says that the holidays are an emotional time for people, which is part of the reason why they can be so difficult for some, and different for everyone.
“The holidays bring up a lot of emotions, a lot of memories,” he says. “Each situation is just so unique. As you get closer to Christmas there is a whole societal expectation that Christmas is going to be very special. By early-to-mid-December it becomes quite an emotionally charged time for all of us.”
He says that the expectations that individuals feel upset about are often self-imposed.
“Some college students feel very inadequate because they wish they had more to give,” says Reagan, giving time and money as specific examples. “But, in fact, that is self-imposed and not the expectation of others.”
Reagan recommends three general tactics to apply to stressful holiday situations. The first is to try to frame everything in a positive way. Secondly, anticipate that it might be a challenging time. And always set realistic expectations and realize there is help available.
For any family, a break in routine or shift in tradition seems inevitable. As time passes, families age, downsize, upsize, splinter, or rewire. There are so many events that impact and shift the course of how a family behaves together. Each family has its own unique existence, but the common human experience is the growth, the changes they experience together.
Camosun environmental technology student Brianne Smith is an example of someone who was able to take a difficult time in her youth and overcome it.
“The biggest issue with my family is that there was a divorce between my parents,” she says. “I was 16. That’s when the Christmases got weird.”
Smith says the divorce was hard on her family, even outside of holidays. “If a family isn’t perfect and you have that expectation of wanting it to be, then emotions of disappointment, sadness, and maybe anger towards the reason why are going to be pretty close to the surface,” she says.
One of the things that got her through the holidays was finding ways to make the best of the situation. By not forcing the old traditions and expectations, her family found new ways to enjoy the holidays in their new arrangement.
“All of us need to learn a variety of coping skills,” says Camosun psychology instructor Bill Wong. “Like a toolbox – you want to have a range of tools to approach the variety of issues. It becomes a problem when people don’t match the coping strategy to the stressor. What you want to do is analyze all the stuff you need to do, and generate as many solutions as possible.”
Wong says to identify all the items or tasks and rank them by difficulty and how much time they will consume. “Manage the stressor,” he says.
Reagan is familiar with the expectation around the holidays to be a happy time. He says that images that are shown on TV and in movies are unrealistic and not the reality for most people.
“If people aren’t living up to that image, they often get very unhappy and very dissatisfied with themselves, so that can become an issue,” he says.
Reagan says that one of the things he teaches is how to step away from that place of overwhelming emotion and how to focus on something different.
“If you’re at a family dinner and you’re anticipating somebody saying something harsh or critical or difficult, before you respond there is great wisdom of just counting to 10 and saying, ‘Do I really need to respond to that?’ or, ‘I knew that was going to come up and I’m just not going to engage.’”
A CAMOSUN CHRISTMAS STORY
Indigenous studies student Lorri Leonard’s holiday memories start in Seattle, when it was just her mom, her brother, and her.
“My mom loved Christmas,” she says. “She would work really hard and make everything for us and it was always really great.”
Leonard says everything changed when her older brother entered his teenage years. The holidays became stressful and disappointing as his focus became more materialistic and less family oriented.
One year, Leonard saved all her money to buy him art supplies, but his reaction wasn’t as she had hoped.
“When he opened it, it was just sheer disappointment,” she says. “He was just like, ‘Oh, yeah, great,’ and shoved it to the side.”
The family found out later that he suffered from depression and they dealt with it together for many years. Leonard says Christmas time became a negative thing in their household.
“It was such a stress with his mood and his depression,” she says. “It was hard watching how sad it made my mom, and I would just be angry and it was miserable.”
When they were older, Leonard and her brother would return to the family home for the holidays. She says the holiday wasn’t family-oriented anymore, and that there were fights and chaos. Her brother would visit friends, she would go to a movie, and her mother would sit at home with company.
Eventually Leonard moved to Victoria and tried her hand at hosting the holiday. Christmas music, food, friends, and gathering was all that she wanted. But it wasn’t to be.
“Again, it didn’t work well,” she says. “They came up here and I’d try to install my rules. It would be ruined because my brother hated it so much that sometimes he would just get drunk. It wasn’t fun.”
Her brother passed away in 1999; Leonard will always remember Christmas that year.
“I knew it was going to be weird for me,” she says. “You take the little things for granted. Even though he hated it and it was such a battle, he was always there. He was like a little Eeyore cloud. It’s funny, it was like we anticipated and looked forward to that fight, that disaster, and sitting down to eat a meal while we’re growling and in turmoil.”
She went back to Seattle that year. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, he’s not going to be here,’” she says.
When she got to her mom’s house she went into the room her mother had set up for her and saw a journal on the pillow: her Christmas journal
“It was so cute because I wrote. and I wrote. and I put it under the pillow and actually fell asleep. It’s like a letter to Santa,” she says. But instead of writing to Santa, she wrote to her brother.
“Loss takes a part of people you know and you never get that part of them back,” she says of her mother. “I felt really angry about that for a long time. She never will be that mom again. but I’m seeing and watching a new beautiful part of my mom grow back.”
Leonard is married now, and has a child of her own to share Christmas with. “I want it to be magical like every kid should have it,” she says.
She remembers walking with her son and husband into her parents’ home in Seattle for the first time. “It was like walking into the most beautiful Christmas palace ever,” she says. “My mom even had things up that my brother and I had made as little kids.”
Her mother involved them with crafts and other things, and they sat up late talking, taking stock of the tacky ornaments. “We were drinking hot cocoa and laughing,” she says. “Ever since then it’s been that way.”
Leonard mentions a new tradition she now shares with only her mother. “It sounds kind of warped, but on Christmas eve, my mom and I will go and get one of those little ornamental trees and decorate it,” she says. “We go as far as getting those little battery-operated LED lights and we take the tree down to my brother’s plot,” she says. “Her and I have our little cry and our moment; then we rub it into him and he has no choice but to put up with the Christmas cheer. Then we go back home.”
Leonard still writes in her Christmas journal to her brother, updating him on everything that has happened over the year. “It’s gone from being one of my worst holidays to… I get all giddy,” she says. “I get excited again. It’s become very positive again.”
THE MOMENT OF CHOICE
Camosun’s Reagan says the emotional essence of the holidays is what makes it very difficult for people going through transitions during the holidays. He says to anticipate the emotional pain that comes with loss.
Reagan says that the first Christmas after there’s been a family loss – whether it’s a parent or significant other, or even the breakup of a long-term relationship – can be a very tumultuous time for all involved.
“It’s hard,” he says. “You just have to admit it’s hard. There is no way to sugarcoat it.”
Reagan recommends making the best of a situation and counting your blessings in order to move in a positive direction. But, at the end of the day, how we deal with our unique situations comes down to the individual.
“There’s just this huge moment of choice,” Reagan says. “Half of that is just knowing that choice exists.”