Christmas Unhappiness

It's an "urban legend" that we have a nation-wide post-holiday depression. Whether it is true or not, in mental health centers all over the US there is a huge influx of new patients starting in December and continuing through February. Perhaps it's due to the winter season and spending more time indoors, but perhaps it's at least partially due to the Christmas gift-giving. We have a lot of pressure probably prompted by mercantile interests to buy "something nice" (i.e.expensive) to demonstrate to family members and friends that we love them. This is clearly not a function of the religion that gave birth to the custom.

It's also true that we are taught from childhood to expect happiness to come with the gifts. The build-up on tv and in legend is tremendous. Christmas morining is the most exciting morning of the year for most children. What presents could possibly match up with their expectations?

What we observe within a few hours is the inevitable let-down. Gifts may give us something to look at or to do, but they don't have the power to make us happy. Quite the contrary, in fact; the more things we own, the more the things own us, our time, our energy, our space. We have to take care of them, find a place for them, do something with them. After the first couple of ecstatic hours, we are already running down, losing our interest and beginning to wonder what to do next.

We expect too much. We are taught to expect too much, and the flood of advertising is designed to charge us up to the bursting point with lust for things. In the back of our minds we even equate getting gifts with being loved, and that there is a relationship between the cost of the gift and the amount of love.

In my opinion, Christmas is ultimately the unhappiest time of the year. But who wants to "spoil it" for others? Discouraging people in the traditional "bah, humbug" sort of way takes what pleasure they can find in it away from them. Christmas gift-giving and getting may be bad for them, but like chocolate pie, who wants to take their pie away, bad for them or not?