Well here it is December 20th and the only decorations I have up are the ones that Steve has put up. He put the outside lights up a while ago and this evening he brought the tree out of it’s hiding place and put it up. Sadly it’s been sitting up, naked,  for about 2 hours now and I could really care less.

There was a time when I would begin to get excited about Christmas in September and the closer December 25th got the more excited I was. Family dynamics, excessive stress and broken promises of sobriety year after year seems to have completely killed my Christmas joy or have I finally grown up?

As I sit here and stare at the bare tree I remember what Christmas was like when I was a kid. My dad would rant and rave as my mom, my brother and I loaded up the car and began a journey that lasted all of two hours back to where we came from. Every Christmas we would all gather back at my aunt’s house which was just down the street from where we lived when we lived in Quebec. It would be crowded, very energetic, loud and fueled with the excitement that kids always bring to Christmas. Always there was a current of tension that I didn’t understand as a child but it always took the edge off happiness as all the adults tip toed around the white elephant in the house.

There were a few occasionswhen I was either too young to pick up on the animosity or I found a way to escape from it that made Christmas blissful but they were very few. In the last 15 years the tension was brought to our house and both Steve and I began to resent the Christmas season. We made “rules of conduct” for my parents that no child should have to make just so we could keep the peace for a few days. What started out as a 4 day stay at our house got whittled down through the years into a few hours and in the last year we tried to avoid a visit all together.

Last year was the first Christmas without my mom and Christmas was exactly what we expected it to be, somber, reflective and somewhat empty. We went to bed on  Christmas Day complete with the obligatory drunken phone call from my father and that’s how Christmas has been in recent years.

This year  Christmas will be a little different as it seems the glue that held my immediate and extended family together was my mom and it is now crystal clear that the family Christmas will continue without me. This leaves me feeling neither sad, nor lonely or even slightly hurt, this year I feel much like the Christmas tree in the living room, up but not decorated.