When I was a kid I never realized how stressful the Christmas season could become. When you’re eight or 10 or 11 years old, Christmas is all about presents and Christmas trees and lights and sugar cookies. There are road trips to see grandparents, singing “Silent Night” by candlelight at church, and endless teasing from uncles that always seems to catch you off-guard even though you always know it’s coming. Christmas was my favorite holiday. One thing my family added to our annual routine was a car ride through local neighborhoods, allowing us to see the fancy light displays of those who decked their… well, decks… with boughs of holly.
However, the older I’ve grown the more I’ve come to understand and experience the darker side of the holidays — the side that causes so much stress that my counselor wife gets extra business after New Years. At a church small group last Wednesday night, we shared with each other some of the things that sometimes turn our holiday season into uncomfortable and even depressing times. Based on our group discussion plus a conversation with that same counselor wife, I’ve compiled a list of things that normally stress-out our Christmastime.
Family
You love them and you hate them and, for some people, you do both! Family strife, baggage, wounds, misunderstandings, personalities, etc… all of these things make for uncomfortable holiday visits. I’ll never be able to forget all the Thanksgivings and Christmases when my own family experienced such trial, usually because my father didn’t get along with his dad. Visits were short and the annual “blow-up” between my dad and grandpa were just part of the holidays that we kids expected and hated. Can you relate? It seems that a lot of the people I know experienced — and still experience — this stress. For some families, an uncomfortable sibling or an uncle who has had too much to drink or self righteous parents or a politics-obsessed relative can ruin Christmas joy and good will.
Money
Credit cards maxed out already? Christmas is just plain expensive. Over the years my “giving limit” has fluctuated like my weight. It was $5 and then $20 and then $15 and then $10… With each gift, the bank account gets smaller and the stress gets larger. I grew up in a fairly small family. There were five of us Newtons. We gave gifts to each other, as we were able, and we combined on gifts for grandparents. Marriage changed all that! Over the past two years I added 15 more people, thanks to Shannon’s big family. So now the gift-giving list is 20. Twenty! Stress…
Gift-Giving
Speaking of gifts, it is not just the money that stresses people out. Gift-giving itself is a chore. This is the third Christmas I get to spend with the lovely Mrs. Newton and one thing I’ve learned is that the act of planning and buying gifts stresses her out. Finding something for everyone that they will like is like… well, trying to get a bipartisan bill through Congress. It’s tough and plenty of compromises have to be made. Recently, my family started a text message chain with Christmas gift wants and desires. My dad went high-tech and super-specific this year, attaching links to items he wants. Specific items. At specific stores. I appreciated it. My mother, on the other hand, usually says something like, “Whatever you give, I’ll love.” To a stressed-out shopper, that phrase is the equivalent of, “I’m not expecting much that I’d like, so go ahead and do your best to impress me.” Ha! She means well, though, and is serious about being happy with anything. I, however, take it as a challenge to impress…
Travel
One of the biggest stressors for Mrs. Newton and me is the logistical battle of spending quality time with three families over the distance of, like, three continents in only 10 days. It’s the “Amazing Race,” Newton style. Shannon’s parents are divorced and stretched across Kansas, while my family is in North Texas. We live in between, in Arkansas. Who do we visit first? Who will get offended if we’re not there on Christmas morning? How will we split up the 26 hours of driving over 10 days? What about weather conditions? Tires? Oil changes? Pit stops???? This year we’ve decided to spend Christmas Eve with our church family, meaning Christmas will be a travel day. That’s never fun!
Loss or Grief
Along the lines of family stress comes one of the most heart-wrenching stressors of the holidays — the feelings of loss and loneliness. I was hit upside the head with this reality back in the early 2000s when an older lady in our church named Jean lost her husband, Jim. Jean was in our weekly small group and as the holidays progressed, her sadness and hurt intensified. We threw our arms around her in an emotional bear hug and tempered our Christmas celebration a bit for her benefit. I have a friend who lost his dad on Christmas Eve and another who lost a grandparent. Thanksgiving is hard on my family because we lost both of my mother’s parents around the beginning of November. Eleven years ago today we suddenly lost my dad’s father. It’s so hard to be joyous when there’s a big hole in your heart.
Christmastime is a season of great joy and hope and light because of the birth of Jesus. And we all await the day He returns to earth to set things right and bring unhealthy stress to an end. Until then we have to live in the here and now — a world of great tension between sadness and joy, loneliness and companionship, heaven and hell. If you see someone suffering from holiday stress this year, will you give them an emotional bear hug? Will you pray for them? Will you check in on them? Doing so can make the holidays easier for them to endure.
J.C. Newton 