The Merriest Christmas You Can Manage!

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, mostly drama-less childhood. Christmases were always low-key, but – crazy as this may seem – they were *happy*.

I 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.

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.

I hated it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The best way to become happy is to act as if you already are.

Anyway – whatever Christmas is to you, and yours, I hope you have a happy and blessed one!