When my daughter, Chloe suggested a socially-distanced outdoor Christmas this year, I pictured my hard-won Christmas traditions going down the drain. Picking out the Christmas tree, talking about our ornaments while drinking eggnog and listening to the Muppets and John Denver sing the Twelve Days of Christmas, making sugar cookies, enjoying all the festive Christmas decorations I’d collected over the years, just abandoned?
“We can do all the same things, just outdoors,” Chloe said. “Dad can make the prime rib on Christmas Eve, I’ll bring the spinach, we can eat on the patio and open gifts outside, then I’ll go home and return on Christmas morning with the Sticky Buns.”
“You’re not going to spend the night in Omar’s room to wait for Santa?” Nick asked.
“He’s kind of out-growing that. And I’m 31 years old. We had a good run,” Chloe said.
I was despondent, which made me recognize that I believed my holiday traditions worthless if I couldn’t share them with Chloe or Nick or Omar. I depended on others to make my holiday count. How could I adjust to this forced change? Then a conversation with Ted came back to me. A few weeks earlier, he was telling me how much he was enjoying celebrating the Christmas season all by himself. I needed help.
“Talk to me about having fun at Christmas without other people,” I said to Ted, telling him about all my traditions being on hold for 2020. He is my go-to for all things spiritual. We have been on a spiritual path together for many years and I depend on him to keep me on the beam.
“I’ve been really surprised that I’m completely okay enjoying the season all by myself. I’ve discovered that I really like my own company,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, you know I like gathering people together as much as anybody. But I can enjoy both now and I’m not really sure how that happened.”
“Well, think about it. I need to learn how to do that.”
“You never could tolerate being alone,” Ted said.
“It’s true, isn’t it? Are you talking about the times when I made sure to have a new boyfriend lined up before dumping the old one?”
“Yes, and plenty of backup friends just in case,” he said. “So many people are having to forego their normal holiday traditions this year. It was strange at first, not gathering in groups because of covid, but I realized not socializing that much has been okay. I’ve been enjoying rambling around in the house, putting up Christmas decorations, making Christmas cookies and watching Hallmark movies.”
“That sounds really relaxing and wonderful,” I said. “But if I tried to do that, I’d just go crazy.”
Ted was right. Historically, I have not done well with being alone. In my younger years, I made sure I was surrounded by people. I couldn’t sit still, always had to be on the go, doing something fun, being entertained. I needed constant excitement and would create trouble or drama if things got quiet.
In my thirties, I reached out for help. I learned that my need for non-stop activity and stimulation served as a distraction from the pain of my past or discomfort in my present. But it also added to my stress level and created chaos in my family. I started developing a spiritual practice in which I would force myself to sit in the little antique rocker in my bedroom for five full minutes. I’d talk to God tentatively, “Okay, God, here I am, sitting here in my bedroom. Everything is okay. Please help me to be still.” I tried spending time alone but my thoughts would get me in trouble, I’d have an urge to shake things up in my life, to create excitement. So for a while, in order not to dig myself into a hole mentally, I continued to surround myself with people in order to keep my body and mind occupied. I was trying to be a settled married lady and a mother and I didn’t even know how to sit down for five minutes.
Although I have recovered from many of those old behaviors, thanks to great programs, many wise friends, my dear mentor, Russell, and a spiritual practice, being alone is still problematic for me. I end up wandering around the house, grabbing a handful of nuts, wandering some more, doing a load of laundry, eating a piece of cheese, watching an episode of House Hunters then grabbing the last quarter of a bag of tortilla chips and scooping out the last of the broken pieces on the bottom. I grow bored and distracted. I straighten up the house then finish off the last five pieces of the fudge before remembering I’m supposed to be on Keto. I feel uninspired, unfocussed and unproductive. I usually end up calling someone.
In the past few years, my need for excitement and stimulation has decreased drastically. Unfortunately, I have created an environment that’s like a three-ring circus, with energy moving so fast in our house that it would make your head spin. I keep telling my family, “I need peace. I need privacy and solitude!” But I rarely get around to actually making that happen, I guess because being alone still feels scary to me. I need to heal the old messages that still creep in when I am alone, messages that say I don’t matter, I’m not important, I’m invisible. Those fears still stop me from really being settled when I am by myself.
Ted called me back a few days after we spoke. “I’ve been thinking about your question,” he said. “And I remembered there was a time when I wasn’t content with my own company either. So I asked myself, what’s changed? Being content with my own company now may be the result of my prayers to elevate my self-consciousness, love and respect. I guess the result of that prayer is being okay spending time alone.”
Seems like, so many times, prayer is the answer.
Our socially-distanced outdoor Christmas was delightful with only a tinge of sadness. We did most of the things we would have done indoors and enjoyed celebrating together. After my conversations with Ted, I pulled my decorations out and put John Denver and the Muppets on. I poured a glass of Keto eggnog and started setting up my Dickensville village on top of the piano. I decorated inside all by myself. And my own company wasn’t so bad.
I don’t know what’s in store for us next Christmas, whether we will try to reinstate what was scrapped this year or whether we will shake it up altogether and spend Christmas in North Carolina next year like Chloe suggested. What I do know is that I created our Christmas traditions to promote wonder and connection and love in my family. By adamantly insisting that we stick with them every year, I was creating just the opposite. I’m going to start praying now so that I’ll grow to enjoy celebrating with Chloe and Omar and Nick in whatever way works for them and also enjoy spending time with myself.
I feel this on many levels! That list including snacking and distractions is perfect. So glad you got to have Christmas with your family in some way! Glad the backward train made its way. It’s an icon now!