God Rest Ye Merry Gentlefolk

“Fake it ’til you make it”.

It’s a glib little saying – and it’s governed so much of my life, it’s hard to even express it. So much of what I am, I am because I basically decided I wanted to *be* that thing, and acted like it until it worked. (See also: this blog, the NARN, my career).

And that’s a good thing.

And it’s never a bigger deal than this time of year.

I make no bones about the fact that I had a childhood Beaver Cleaver would have envied. I had a pretty intact family, no major dysfunctions – I have no complaints. The Christmas holiday was always a joyful memory; family, food, tradition…love. I wish everyone were as lucky.

Then came adult life.

Without going into a whole lot of details, when my kids were little, there were certain stressors in life that made the holidays…complex. Anxious, stressful, parlous, sometimes outright tests of emotional and physical endurance.

And I resolved to push the happiness, the *cheer*, almost to an absurd extent – because I was hanging on to that shred of joy, happiness and family by my fingernails. And in its own way, it – “Faking” ample joy for Christmas – worked.

I can’t speak for my kids – they’re adults, with their own lives and tradtions of their own, now – but the holidays as a general rule *aren’t* white-knuckle anxiety rides. They are good, not just because I *will them* to not be bad, but because the attitude seems to help give me the mental headspace to focus on the holiday rather than all the angst – and to actually enjoy this time of year.

This flies in the face of the modern obsession with “being authentic” to how one feels – a trait with some upsides, but a solipsistic overtone that boils down to “it’s better to be ‘real’ than to be happy”. Thing is, while one can not create one’s own reality, one can change one’s perception of and reaction to that reality; sometimes, the best way to do that is to just do it.

And modern society goes cynical about the holidays on the drop of a pin. I’ve related in the past my disgust for media (principally NPR) pounding a drumbeat of cynical, post-modern, anxious misery about the holidays – the stress, the anxiety, having to put up with all those *relatives* who act, and see the world, differently than you…

Modern society and its obsessions can get stuffed.

I hope you all have a joyful, meaningful holiday – whatever that means to you.

11 thoughts on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlefolk

  1. War on Christmas? That’s nothing. I’m still mad about how Obama took away my guns, declared himself emperor for life, and forced all Americans to convert to Islam and instituted Sharia law.

    I’ve never understood this war on Christmas rant. To people who I know celebrate Christmas I say Merry Christmas. To people who I know celebrate Hanukkah, I say happy Hanukkah. To all others I say happy holidays. That’s always seemed pretty easy to me.

    The problem is you have to think logically.

  2. Wow, oral diarrhea to the absurd. Totally off topic; the troll must be getting very upset about the looming bloodbath in the midterms. Unless they pass national election fraud laws, which looks unlikely now.

    Christmas in schools is now winter holiday, no Christmas carols allowed, we are painfully inundated with “Happy Holidays” from every quarter, college students not allowed to hang their own wreaths, some loser leftist torches the Fox tree.

    Yup, nothing to see here, move along.

  3. Again Mitch, I left for a few months due to your inability to police your own site, and its coming round to new years, resolutions and all, not gonna hang around here and watch some troll crap all over your house, with no ramifications. If that’s the way you want it, well, it’s your place, have at it.

    If it were my place I would tell the troll find quotes for those idiotic things in his post, or you are gone. No one said those things here. Find some backbone my dude.

    Emperor for life, lol. I guess those are all the trolls wishes that didn’t come true.

  4. Lol

    It’s funny to watch rAt Emery use his 80 IQ. His flailing shows the same ingenuity of a 4 year old girl who throws covers over her head to hide from monsters.

    “The economy is booming! BOOMING I tells ya!!!”

    Hahahaha

  5. Kinlaw, Mitch could use the platforms he has to help our people organize…but he still hopes some “conservative” media will elevate him to celebrity.

    Normie “conservatives” are still clinging to the “freedom of speech” myth. He needs rAt Emery and Peevee to prove his moderate bona fides.

    I continue here, mostly, out of habit.

  6. I would just like to add, for the trolls sake, that it is the red states leading the economic recovery. Your welcome.

  7. Back to the topic, I remember good and bad Christmasses as a kid–the bad ones mostly relating to the lead-up to my parents’ divorce. Always loved the holiday, and my brother and I would be the first to bring out the decorations–maybe a few new ones each year, but more of ’em dating back at least a decade.

    I’m struggling with the earnest desire for NEW NEW NEW that we have these days. Seems that when I got a present back as a kid, it wasn’t always the biggest, but it was something I would use for a good long time and was made well. These days, I watch as my kids go to Savers and get a whole bunch of stuff, then take about an equal amount of stuff back. My daughter didn’t even recognize a genuine wool suitcoat she bought for a play she was in, or even how to pick it out from poly and such.

    More of us need to watch that Chevy commercial.

  8. Twat wrote: “I continue here, mostly, out of habit.”

    This time with feeling— ‘I Wish I Knew How to Quit You’ …..

  9. ‘I Wish I Knew How to Quit You’ …..

    Whjile it’s a well-played comeback, it’s in service of a threadjack.

    More on Monday.

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