A peaceful holiday season--and all the guilt that comes with it....

I had another wonderful, peaceful holiday season...but it's hard to just enjoy a peaceful holiday. Our world--or is it just our media?--likes to emphasize how we're supposed to spend the holidays with family. Family is supposed to be everything...

Not all families are the same though. What if your family makes the holidays a giant, depressing, pain in the ass?

Even though our relationship is unsettled, Steady Eddie and I still spent X-mas together, and visited with his family on X-mas eve. I like these people. He's got seven siblings in all, five of them here. All are different, and all respect one another. There's no backbiting, no berating, no thinking this one or that one is a "loser" or "weirdo" or anything like that. Rather than buying for each person, names are drawn around Thanksgiving, and one gift is purchased for one person, so everyone gets something from someone. It allows everyone to share in present-opening. The food is more important though. And the food is always fun.

The other holidays were spent quietly at my apartment, with me cooking some very nice meals. I did a lot of baking this year--something I hadn't done in a long time. Didn't get to share with anyone other than Steady Eddie, but, given this was the first year in many, I didn't have things planned out enough in advance to package up and give to friends.

This year, though, may be different. We'll see.

As I was shopping for Steady Eddie's presents, I was in line behind some women who were bitching and moaning about their kids. All I could say to them was, "well, when I was that age, I did a number of things that were hair-raising. Don't think kids are all that bad nowadays, really..." And got to thinking that maybe these women were either lying or actually were straight-arrows who did nothing "bad" when they were kids. I was also struck by the woman whose daughter wanted to major in dance, and how she was trying to dissuade her from it. Typical working class mentality--with no idea that when you're in college you make connections, and even if you don't make it professionally in something, you can end up doing something related. A dancer who doesn't "make it big" can end up in arts administration or teaching or somewhere where she's happy and still connected to her passion.

The working-class doesn't get that. All they see is work. Working class attitudes are more stultifying and dream-crushing than what happens when you, all on your own, realize you're not going to make it. When you realize that, it's okay. After the initial disappointment, you re-tool. You figure it out. And you move on. If you never get to realize, even partially, that dream, you're always lusting after it, trying to find a way to have it, even if it means pushing it on to your kids, who may have other ideas of who they are and who they want to be.

Working class sucks.

Still, in the totality of the shopping experience, I thought back to when I had my first career--how I used to run around after a full day of work, or on the weekend, with a big list, trying to get everything done *just right.* Thought about the wooden office Christmas parties where we were supposed to sing Christmas carols.

I never sang Christmas carols. I always felt self-conscious about singing, thanks to my family.

Sometimes I miss the Christmas parties with their enforced socialization. More often, I don't.

And this year I realized that, while I *should* be running around like a maniac, I'm not.

All this not-running around makes my holiday much nicer. I don't have to be at this parent's or that parent's or make sure that I see a sibling or aunt or someone. Maybe I should feel lonely in all of that, but I don't. I feel at peace. I feel calm. I'm left with time for rest and contemplation.

In being away from the mad rush and guilt, I enjoy the holiday much more.

And I understand how I burnt out from it all in my early 30's. I just wasn't cut out for the middle-class dream of loud celebration and messy, adversarial family relations.

The "traditional" holidays shown in media ate me alive and spat me out, a chewed-up, burnt out mess.

When I realized this, I got over the guilt. Let other people have the loud, messy, angry holiday. I don't need it. So, my holidays are un-traditional, and quiet, and loving, and I feel better about them now than I ever did.

To each his own kind of merry holiday season...