Mental Note for Next Holidays: How to Slay a Christmas Monster

Krampus, Yule Dudes, Yule Cats. Its December and they are the least of our concerns… or so we think.

We are more inclined towards saintly beings like the virging Mary, maybe some Joseph, and Jesus. Definitely Jesus. and nativity plays and shopping and gifting and carols and cooking, back to shopping and partying and drinking and munching and shopping again…till we kind of drop!

Soon enough the distractions of the merriment start to fade and the rice lights become annoying. (And we thought they would magically make our life better)! To think of how much, we spent replicating the white house decorations!

Ouch… trip alert. The damn tree. what a hazard. who knew!

Yes, lets blame all the trip and fall on the Christmas tree, not the drinks we were supposed to gift but couldn’t part with.

Another proof that our judgement becomes impacted the teensiest weensiest (ok who is buying that) bit after a period of intense perkiness and intense repression of uncomfortable feelings.

If we were watching someone’s ho ho ho go howl howl howl as their repressed monsters unleash on them, we may grab some popcorn. When it happens to us, damn. In our minds’ eyes, those monsters have six more heads, and fingernails growing out of their eyes.

You know what is scarier? January. Only a door away.  Forget that tale of the new year suddenly making all things new. It isn’t what your pastor told you, I know. Come on. We all have met Januaries. Nothing could be more capricornian, no matter how much happy and new we put into the greetings.

It is a bill-full month…Christmas decorations, the gifts, the cooking, the shopping and the shopping…. Sigh!

Couple that bill-fullness with the demand to be crispy, and ready to perform in the new year. No one even talks about how we need to recuperate from all the sun’s hiding (That winter solstice thing is real).

Then there is the matter of dragging the weight of a resolution that once again didn’t make it through the first day of the year. It wouldn’t have cured our carb and party induced induce inflammation if it made it through, but still.

Flashback to December. The cheeriness! The perkiness! Extra positivity! Blinding positivity. They sure have their dark sides. They get toxic. And we crash! Putting the character armour tighter is even worse. Much more exhausting than dealing with the emotional pain we tried to merry away.

But we don’t pay attention to those pains do we? We just chug on the hustle atop the haziness and unworthiness. Suddenly its spring but we can’t see it. Blinded by work. Blinded by denial.

Mental note for next holidays. Start early. As early as Halloween maybe. Rather than go lengths looking for some gothic costume, wear the monsters within. The ones that masquerade as emotional pain.

Start the shadow work early. That should prepare us for real gratitude come thanksgiving. Real thanksgiving and less shoving political agenda down the throats of families and friends.

Then when Christmas shows up and the sun begins to go down, we may have mastered the light within so much we see in the dark. We won’t necessarily have to hide the pain of lost love, unmaterialized promotions behind heavy Christmas decorations.

Come on now, we have been around that rodeo long enough. Those emotional monsters need recognition healing and love. They have a message. They need to be heard.

Holding them down, holding them back and holding them in is exhausting AF. Even if they take a nap, especially if they take a nap. Because when they wake up there is going to be one hell of a wild ride.

So we may as well, just… you know… (shrug)

…sit with them (there I said it.)

… accept the frailty of our humanity, the shades of our grey. because hello, we aren’t all light and sunshine.

…Look at what is hidden from our awareness, the sadness, the darkness till we see in the dark.

…find beauty in the grotesque.

…Confront our fears not necessarily our adversaries. Make peace with them. honour them. it is our hope of transmuting and transcending.

When one blesses a man or a monster he has no power to harm him. The law of non-resistance and all.

…Let’s have a good cry, empty ourselves. We can then write in glitters or rice lights across our walls the lessons the year brought and when we put a star atop the tree it will be in appreciation of how we have grown.

We will look back at the monsters then, the pains, the failure and ask that they raise their glasses with us in toast to the outgoing year.

A cross over rendition of O holy night might not even be a bad idea.

and when the new year rolls in, it will indeed be new.