The Grinchening

It went like this, see … I didn’t always grinch about Christmas. In fact, once upon a time I loved Christmas so much I left my apartment decorated like Whoville for an entire year. 

I remember my childhood Christmases were made joyful through the generosity of strangers. I remember opening Barbie’s my mom couldn’t afford because the church or Red Cross or women’s shelter adopted us. I remember going winter clothes shopping with a volunteer from the bank. I loved these Christmases because it was just like the movies — all hope would be lost for this homeless neglected family but at the last minute Santa shows up and brings the magic. Mostly, I was just happy for my little sister; she didn’t deserve to not get presents. 

Later, when things “stabilized,” I remember the fighting and the silence leading up to Christmas. The tension, the fear, the tentative wish to feel peace and love … the crushing fearful hope that I might be loved by a family. Every year, thick with hope. 

Then I had my first apartment, all alone with my cat, and I decorated it like Dr. Seuss Christmas and left it that way until I moved to an island.

Island Christmas was like a different movie, like one about freedom and debauchery. I dressed up in lingerie under a Santa costume with a pillow-belly and strip teased my musician-boyfriend one Christmas. I danced with a broken knee on crutches to live music while my debonair friend held and twirled me around the pool. I toasted the boat parade. I wore bikinis to dinner.

Moving to New Hampshire is when I cite the grinch beginning to haunt me, but now, in hindsight, it becomes obvious that the decay had already begun.

I married for love, and we had a small family, my gods it was finally mine! Except it wasn’t, see, because his child already had a bunch of family … and on Christmas one year between the many houses he had something like 16 Christmas Trees and more gifts than anyone could count … and I was begging my man, my love, to share cheer and to feel joy. To be *with me* in it. 

And none of it came, I mean I baked cookies and watched the movies and thoughtfully gifted as I always do .. I cooked big meals and invited people and tried. But in the noise of 16 trees? What a wasted effort. 

I grew my own baby, added him to our family. Promised he would never have 16 Christmases … started leaning into my own spirit and the old traditions, started creating space where no one else was standing. Made solstice into My Holiday. Still did Christmas, too, for the kids, but my heart flickered at the emptiness of the “holiday joy.” 

My small family didn’t make it, the love never returned to me, or I couldn’t remember how to see it, and I left because that is what I learned to do. 

Six — almost seven — Christmases have happened now, with my even smaller family. Gradually, the grinch took over my glittering joy – I no longer smiled at Christmas commercials, I cringed. The music makes me nauseous. I do not buy a tree. Any trees. 

Two years ago, when I realized my child had uncountable gifts and trees and celebrations to attend with his other family, I submitted my resignation. I quit Christmas. Though the hardness in my heart has shrunken it 10 times, I will not let that dark leech into my golden child. He doesn’t need to sit in the dark in my empty home on The Biggest Holiday. 

Now — before we go feeling bad and inviting me to stuff — please hear that I have been the “plus one” my entire life. I was half an orphan the day I was born and homeless and displaced since. Friends, boyfriends, distant family, and even strangers love to invite me. 

And as much as I appreciate the charitable sentiment, it is not the vision I hold for myself. I dream of *being* a happy family, hosting and attending holidays that feel like … like I’m an integral part of a really big love. Like Christmas. 

Not like the grinch, whom everyone eventually pitied and embraced out of guilt. 

Once upon a time, I loved Christmas. But now … it is a strange time of calendar blackout during which I will someday travel far, far away. 

… one more thing.

My grinchening is not unusual, but it’s a story we don’t tell enough. Not every Scrooge and Grinch we meet is all the way dead inside. Not all of us are selfish. Most of us are glad you like Christmas, even. I’d guess most of us got here like I did, gradually, over the course of a lifetime of rotten Christmases, and that we just want to be left alone about it rather than vilified or turned into your Christmas Charity Project. Respectfully.