I’m going to come right out and say it: I hate the holidays. I hate the Christmas music playing on the radio. I hate the shopping malls that reek of American consumerism. I hate the cheesy Christmas decorations on houses. I hate tacky sweater parties.
Every year around this time, I get into a funk. As all of the people around me seem to get happier, I become farther removed from all the “holiday spirit.” The sound of the Salvation Army bells ringing makes me want to burst out crying in the middle of the sidewalk as I’m walking down the corner. But I keep myself together, because being sad on Christmas — well, that’s just unacceptable.
It took me a long time to figure out why this time of year puts me in such a terrible mood. I never quite understood it, until my sister — the part-time counselor and full-time mom who has a master’s degree in psychology — put it into words.
“Having kids definitely makes it easier,” she said. “But I still hate the pressure — both spoken and unspoken — to have only positive feelings.”
There it was. It’s the flip side of the trope in “A Christmas Carol.” If you’re not happy during the holidays, you’re a scrooge; you’re the outcast, the misanthrope. You’re the one who needs salvation, who needs to join the norm that everyone else belongs to.
I’m not a part of that norm. I never have been. But over the years I’ve gotten so tired of feeling like I need to explain myself to people, when I tell them that I really don’t enjoy the holidays, and they look at me like I have three heads. Fed up, I closed off all of those negative emotions and put up a façade. I tried desperately to pretend that I was having just as much fun as everyone else. It didn’t work. And all those years of trying and failing are what’s made me cringe and brace myself every time the calendar gets close to December.
One of our talented opinion columnists, George Knaysi, recently wrote a four-part series of columns on the importance of mental health. He emphasizes the need to turn away from “popular psychology” and instead embrace clinically proven methods of maintaining our mental well-being. I consider the logic of “Be happy; it’s Christmas” to fall into that category of popular psychology epigrammatic clichés.
If you tell me, “Be happy; it’s Christmas,” you’re not helping. In fact, you’re probably going to make me feel worse. The more I try to be happy on a whim — when I try to shove those sad feelings back into whatever black hole they came from — the more defeated I feel. And my personal experience isn’t an anomaly. A study done at the University of Denver found that people with greater acceptance of their negative emotions are actually less likely to experience depression. Joseph Forgas, one of the leading researchers on the positive effects of negative feelings, explains: “By pretending that happiness and positivity are universally desirable and attainable, we are probably creating an unrealistic popular expectation that leaves many people less happy and satisfied than they could otherwise be.”
I have positive and negative emotions the whole year round. Let’s be realistic; we all do. The holidays don’t do anything to change that. What they do change is the pressure to experience one over the other, and such pressure only undermines the standard it is trying to achieve.
You can call me a scrooge if you want to. But I know that I’m not alone in feeling this way. For those of you know exactly what I’m talking about — come over and hang out with me this December. There are no decorations in my apartment, no holiday-themed drinks in the fridge. Come laugh and have a good time, or don’t. There will be no judgments — and certainly no tacky sweaters.
Katherine Ripley is an Opinion editor for The Cavalier Daily.
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