JOYless CHRISTMAS
a one-year old journal entry…
If I were Santa Claus, I’d stuff all my negative emotions, sad thoughts, painful memories, core issues and whatnot, in a sack. When the emotional baggage is tightly secured in the sack, I will drop it straight down the chimney to the burning fireplace below.
Wham! Phffft! The fire had consumed it all! I’m now free to roam the world with no heavy stuff with me, just the light, precious feeling of spreading goodwill, love, peace and joy I have in me, to every soul on earth. Hoh! I wish it were that easy…
Since I am not Saint Nicholas, I’m taking things one tiny step at a time, and savouring the moment. Allowing myself first to face the one subject I have been dodging since I cannot even remember when — Christmas. I am actually writing about it now! This is the time of the year when my emotional level is at its lowest peak. Christmas lights make me bow my head in sadness. The carols a downer, shooting stinging darts at my heart, drawing me in a melancholic mood. I told this to my cousin’s wife when she informed me of the upcoming party on Christmas eve while she was decorating the house. “Christmas is for the family,” was my ready reply when she asked, “Why?!” “We are your family,” she said. But I know she understood what I meant. This is one thing I’m very thankful for, having my cousin’s loving family in Vancouver, even just for a while. One day soon, I will be moving away again, on my own. While I have this time, I will cherish every moment, spending the holidays, dancing my bum off, and laughing my heart out with them.
Friends substitute for the absent family during the holidays. Growing up, I was always in some neighbors’ house. Teen-age year Christmases were spent with my gangs and their families. As a migrant worker in my first Taiwan stint, I spent Christmas eve weeping in bed, and Christmas day walking in circles at four o’clock in a winter morning in Ilan City park with a huge, half-paralyzed elderly supported on my side. The following year in Taipei City, I was with a couple of my Taiwanese friends and their friends who took me for night joy-ride and tea shop-hopping. Holidays in Hong Kong were either spent with my coworker and boss’ family or alone, snoring in bed along with the clanging of the church bells.. My last Christmas there was with friends and acquaintances. I did feel jolly and cheerful, appreciating the merrymaking with these people. But after the laughters had died down, and I find myself alone, that was when utter loneliness creep in.
I told a very dear friend recently that Christmas is one of the things I no longer believe in. Not true. Upon deeper reflection, there is a ray of hope deep down within; a deep longing for my loved ones to spend the holidays with, someday — as a family — complete, healed from past wounds. The frozen part of my soul just needs the right amount of heat in order for it to thaw. Given time, the flow will be smooth, unhampered. By then, it will be a paddle I will be asking from Santa, not a sack…
*Published in True Friends Newsmag (December 2008 issue)
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