<\/a>pointed out in memorializing my mom last year, her and my father gave us what I now know to be a priceless gift; a boring, mostly drama-less childhood. Christmases were always low-key, but – crazy as this may seem – they were *happy*.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI get it – there are people with all manner of trauma in their lives. Not everyone has great associations with the season. But there’s also a cynicism to modern life; a crowd that seems to think that whizzing on the idea of a *happy Christmas* is the thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went through a stage in my life where I was around people whose primary emotion around Christmas was stress. The names, and for that matter the stages, aren’t that important, and I’m not judging, or even discussing, the motivations – the point being, Christmases exuded stress, panic, misery and tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hated it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I had little kids at the time. And for what it was worth, I figured I was going to try to pass on some of the joy I still held onto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so, on some dark, tense, difficult Christmas long ago, I resolved that I was going to be happy, whatever it took. To “crap sunshine”, as one of my more charming mentors put it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was some psychology to it. I’d read a biography of photographer Robert Capa, which had included an old Hungarian saying – “the best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are”. And while I didn’t know it at the time, that’s true in a lot of things in life – “fake it til you make it” can be a very helpful principle. For everyone, in every situation? Of course not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it worked for me. The less counsel I took of the stress and tension, and the more I pushed “joy”, the less I needed to push, and the further into the back that stress and tension faded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The best way to become happy is to act as if you already are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway – whatever Christmas is to you, and yours, I hope you have a happy and blessed one!<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve probably written this before. And that’s OK. I make a point of being – in modern parlance – “radically joyful” during the Christmas season. Let me explain. As I pointed out in memorializing my mom last year, her and my father gave us what I now know to be a priceless gift; a boring, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86703,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86702\/revisions\/86703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}