12 Grinch Days Of Christmas – Day #7 Holiday Disappointment

Day #7 – Holiday Disappointment

Holiday disappointment is inevitable.  The only way to avoid holiday disappointment is to not have the holiday season.  But then you couldn’t have it anyways, but I digress.  With all the anticipation and hype surrounding the holidays nothing can live up to what the world says you should expect.

There is all the holiday cheer where everyone around you is happy and joyful.  Families come together and sing carols.  Miracles happen and Santa fulfills all little kids dreams.  You can’t tell me that this doesn’t reek of soon to be tears of disappointment.  It is all the hope that we give people that doesn’t exist.

I know for me as a kid I would dream of normal gifts.  I would ask Santa for just regular toys but it never happened.  I used to think that Christmas was this magical time of year and it is.  Christmas is the time when you figure out that hope is an illusion you create yourself to keep from losing it.  It is the time where you find out where you really fit within the hierarchy of this world or even within your own family.  It is the time where some families run themselves into to debt just so they get the toy they thought would be so amazing and then their child plays with for 10 minutes and spends the rest of the holiday break playing with the box it was shipped in.

I am probably the most cynical person you will meet and I feel the holiday season only reinforces my position.  You see the greed and the fighting over items on Black Friday.  You read about the people trampled to death or shot.  And then when the toys are all gone you have to pay 5 times its original price just to get one off Ebay.  This is all done to prevent disappointment on Christmas but the funny thing it will never work.  I know in my perfectionist brain something always goes wrong.  The Turkey isn’t good enough or there is not enough candy canes or you wanted to get a certain item and didn’t so you feel disappointed that your child won’t get that toy.  You want a certain atmosphere and all you get is screaming moody teenagers.  No, the holiday season is full of disappointment.  Some would say life is full of disappointment and I would agree with you.  I would add to it that there are more opportunities and circumstances over the holidays that lead to more and more feelings of disappointment.  Things you just cannot avoid.

I am looking forward to things this year that I know won’t disappoint me.  The first is that eventually the holiday season will end.  The second is that this hellish year full of hurt, sorrow, and disappointment is going to come to an end as well.

Merry Grinchmas!