On Expectations of the Season

Today is often a difficult day for many people who celebrate Christmas, and it's been made worse with the prospect of walking into a family dinner with Covid in the air. 

Not all of us are surrounded by the people we love today, which can make the day all the more difficult than an ordinary day, when we don't compare ourselves so stringently to this ideal. 

Part of the problem is an old one: the universal issue of going back to the family home and re-experiencing all sorts of old feelings that have laid dormant. That can be hard on its own. But an additional element at Christmas is around gift-giving and expectations. In our consumerist culture, we have entwined gifts with all the images advertisers have given us of that perfect present that magically connects people to the point that we might expect that the right or wrong gift will prove to us that people understand us or at least see us. It's so often fraught with errors that are perceived to hold far more meaning than they necessarily do.  

It can be hard to remember that it's the connection we're after, not the things. 

To me Christmas is a time of digging in to our inherent generous spirit that provokes us to do things for others. But I'm often stymied by this very self-judgment around expectations of myself to get the perfect gifts for my kids. When they were littles, it was so easy! We didn't have a TV for a long time, so they weren't inundated with advertisements for all the things, and the few toys I found and wrapped were opened with overt delight. Their joy was delicious! By the time they were in double-digits, though, I found myself in the mall in the days after holiday, receipts in hand, exchanging things for different colours or styles or models.

I think I was significantly affected by a gift my old boyfriend gave me when I just started university. I had an old typewriter and was hoping for a new correctable typewriter. They could actually store up to five words at a time before typing them so any little mistypes could be easily corrected without liquid paper! It was miraculous!! He bought me a brand new typewriter, but not a correctable one. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I said nothing about it. I tolerated the liquid paper years until I started working and could save up for a desktop computer. In hindsight, it felt like a such a waste to not just return it for the newer model that could have made my life significantly easier for just a few dollars more! Because of that experience, I let my kids know not to just tolerate gifts that weren't quite right, and we'd all try to make an event of the trip back to the mall. 

Then we tried to nip that in the bud and we started making lists with links to the actual items, and now I feel like I'm just doing their shopping for them. Nothing is personal, so it's like it completely bypasses that illusory connectedness while also buying in to it! So this year, I went off-list and got them random silly things they don't need but are specific to them and that might show I'm thinking of them because I'm still trying to connect with things. I also always write a heartfelt card to them and started including a bit of cash so they can at least buy themselves the socks and underwear they came to expect. (And then there's the whole reciprocation issue.) 

It's so tricky to get it right. 

It's time for a good reminder, again, that it doesn't mean anything. Gift-accuracy isn't necessarily a demonstration of how much we pay attention and definitely not a marker of how much we love. We can love people to the moon and back without understanding the importance in the difference between the shade of green of the sweater they wanted compared to the one we bought them. My boyfriend didn't understand different typewriters, which doesn't mean he didn't understand me. Or my mom, who once bought me a cassette of Simon and Garfunkel, one of my favourite musicians at the time, but sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! 

Her intentions were pure.

On top of all that, we're in one of the worst Covid surges we've ever experienced and still so many don't acknowledge it and may even get angry if we show up with a mask on or with a mini-HEPA or any mechanism at all to prevent ourselves from getting sick. Put that away; I'm not diseased!! Some people are offended at the prospect that they're being perceived as untouchable despite how common it is to have and spread Covid right now, and how many are in the hospitals, and how many don't come back from it unscathed. So some people have chosen to miss family meals. And some people have relationships so damaged from it all they seem irreparable. And some people have lost family entirely. I lost my brother this year, and two dear friends.

My daughter's walking into a difficult scenario later today, expected to come in without a mask to sit for dinner, and I'm just preparing to have to take care of her for the next few weeks while taking precautions not to catch anything from her myself. She suddenly burst into tears one day recently that everyone at her dad's house is always sick, but she feels the pull to join them for this yearly tradition without any mention of the continuing pandemic permitted. It's extra-strength denial.

She got sick the last two Christmases from her dad's home - one was definitely Covid -  and Long Covid is a game of numbers: the more Covid you get, the greater your chances of getting Long Covid. I'm making peace with the reality that, when I say good-bye to her later today, it might be the last time I see her healthy. 

It's brutal to think of her dreams dashed. Absolutely brutal. 

And it's brutal to think of all the other children affected, and all the people affected by arguably far worse in many parts of the world. These are dark times.

I work very hard to keep my kids safe 364 days/year. She visits with extended family outdoors the rest of the year. It's not just hard to let them take risks when we know the costs; it's morally injurious to know their other loved ones are exposing them to harm. Because it's the dominant belief and the dominant behaviour, it can't be called "abuse," but I don't know another name for it. And it hasn't changed much since that first pandemic Christmas.

It's time for another watch of It's a Wonderful Life (a 15 min sociological critique) to dream about the possibility of being community-minded again instead of getting sucked into all the hoopla about individual rights and freedoms despite any harmful effects to the community. Goodness is in all of us, but it can be an effort to find it in ourselves as well as in others making grave errors with eyes wide open.

"The world reflects what we project on to it. If we let ourselves become cold and cynical, the world will respond in kind. But if we look for goodness and compassion, we will find that it's there too."

Still working on looking for that!

All the best to you and yours at this glorious yet horrific season. Fingers crossed. Here we go!

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BASICS REMINDER: Most Covid transmission is from people who look and feel completely healthy. Exhaling unmasked can send Covid across a room in minutes, where it hangs in the air for hours like cigarette smoke. Vaccines help reduce severity of cases, but can't eliminate transmission and wane in effectiveness within months because Covid mutates so fast (because of all the spread!). It takes seconds to inhale Covid where it gets into cells all over the body, able to hibernate and affect the brain, heart, and other organs. N95s trap Covid using inertial impaction, diffusion, interception, and electrostatic attraction. They really work!! Covid's the #3 killer in Canada, and we don't know how many people it has disabled. Avoid being one of them. There is no treatment, only prevention. Be wise with N95s!