The holiday season is a wonderful time of the year. It brings out the best in people (as long as you stay away from the mall) and is a time to be spent with family, friends and loved ones. However, for myself and many others, the holiday season isn't always the happiest season of all.
Ever since my parents' divorce and my Mom passing away, the holiday season has always been very difficult for me to celebrate. To start, after my parents decided to separate, there were so many family traditions that would never be the same. No more going to pick out our ornaments for that year, no more going to the Ice Caverns to see the displays, no more decorating the tree as a family and no more watching the Christmas special cuddled together as a family. I remember just crying that first holiday season without my whole family together and never quite feeling all of the excitement I once did as a kid when the holidays came around.
To go along with this, after my Mom passed away I really lost all sense of enchantment that the holiday season brought. I didn't have the strength to get through the day most of the time, let alone be happy for the holidays. Not only did the mean that my whole family would not be together for the holidays, but the possibility of it ever happening was now forever gone. I would never wake up on Christmas morning to my Mom's cheery smile as she watched my brother and me open our presents. I would never see "From: Santa" written on a gift in my Mom's handwriting even though both my brother and I no longer believed. I would never have to pose with my presents 6 different times so my Mom could record our reaction as we opened them, take a picture with the camera and then a picture with her phone.
Due to all of this, the holiday season is probably the roughest season for me. There are so many memories that I hold near and dear to my heart that have occurred in this season that are heartbreaking to relive. To this day, I struggle with just decorating the tree because the tradition doesn't involve all of the people who made it into the memory I have of it. I cry at just about every Christmas special (which I already wept through Frosty before all of this, but still) because we aren't all there to watch them. Even opening Christmas gifts on Christmas morning doesn't feel right without having three different cameras in my face.
While I am definitely not a Grinch and hate the Christmas season, it definitely evokes a lot of memories for me. I am grateful for all that my parents did for my brother and me to make so many amazing traditions that have become such a deep part of who we are. I hope one day that I can do the same for my children and make Christmas a happy time for me once again.
