MANILA, Philippines - It’s not unusual to hear adults hating the holiday season, especially those who are my age and fairly new to the disillusionment — that sudden callousness that cannot be penetrated by a million dancing lights. I guess it feels cool and legitimate to be “over” Christmas. To see through all the fake Santa Clauses in cheap costumes at the mall, and all the other ways that this supposed time of joy and cheer is constructed and sewn at the seams.
Except being cool and contrarian about the season does little for me. And if I were to be honest, more than anything else it still feels sad and dreadful to be crashing from the years I spent on a yuletide high. I miss how automatically magical everything felt when I was a child. How easily I fell for Jose Mari Chan songs, the deluge of gifts that lasts while people still think you’re cute, how big a deal it was for my sugar-strict parents to give in with candy canes, and basically buying everyone’s happy smiles without question.
When I outgrew that, Christmas became about activity, people, and parties. I was lucky to be a music major in college. I had absolutely no complaints about being required to be part of Christmas galas and performances, even just as a choir member. I also loved caroling with org mates here and there and snickering at my tone-deaf companions. It’s almost impossible to not get into the spirit of things when you’re directly taking on an aspect of the celebrations, especially if that aspect was music. There was the annual UP Lantern Parade, which was such a big deal in my early college years. My batch mates and I would attend it in full force, rallying and cheering behind our college’s lantern despite how rushed and pathetic it sometimes looked. And when all the work was done, we’d go off to party, driving up to Tagaytay with a trunk full of alcohol and hotdogs for breakfast.
Hitting the infamous quarter life stage tends to change all that. Suddenly, you’re all individually busy, as opposed to being busy together. No one has the will or the time for caroling rehearsals. The UP Lantern Parade is now a faraway tradition that invokes nostalgia. If I were to attend it, I would either have to find willing long lost friends in advance, or hope I bump into a familiar face in the crowd. I can no longer take for granted that my people will be there, or anywhere for that matter.
It’s a lot harder to schedule get-togethers, as the mid-to-late 20s seem to be characterized by a combination of being too occupied and too lazy. And sometimes when you get there, it’s possible to find that you’ve grown distant from people you used to know so well before. A good thing about getting older is that you know yourself so much better. The downside is that you’re also keenly aware when company fits and doesn’t fit. I’ve looked forward to reunions, only to dream of the relief of escaping the empty pleasantries once I get there. I’m a lot pickier with friends than I used to be, even though I never meant to or wanted to swerve in this direction. I miss the times when I lacked enough awareness to be convinced that I enjoyed pretty much everybody’s company.
RESULTING LONELINESS
The overall result is loneliness. I don’t mind not painting the town red most of the year. But Christmas is like the Valentine’s Day for your entire soul. If you’re hooked up and happy, great! But if not, prepare to have some salt rubbed into your taken-for-granted aches. Prepare to feel empty and isolated at a time when the whole country is singing about the warmth of loved ones. Prepare to bitch about impossible taxi lines just so you don’t have to admit that you’re sad.
There are those who say that Christmas is just one big dose of Kool-Aid anyway, like there’s no actual reason to get so worked up, whether positively or negatively. This is true. But the same thing can be said about pretty much everything else that we derive meaning from. And if life is just a drug, then I miss Christmas and still wish we could work things out somehow. I mean, I’m gonna be stuck in its traffic every year, so I might as well.
This year, I’ve been taking it slow. I don’t see myself running to the season with the eager anticipation that I used to welcome it with as a child, but I’ve been making a conscious effort to not be such a Grinch either. To show up, keep my windows open, and see what happens. To not get ahead of myself in declaring all relationships awkward failures. To hang around and if nothing else, at least let the sunshine in and treasure what I get.
It’s a very tiny, subtle effort, but surprisingly I’m finding the season to be livable again, maybe even enjoyable. I may never get back the versions of Christmas that I knew as a child or as a carefree young adult, but maybe they were never supposed to come back anyway. Like my current relationship with my university’s annual parade, the crowds around me are no longer mine. But when I do find a few familiar (or willing to be familiar) faces and let them warm my world as much as they would, I find that that’s enough. And I don’t really have to ask for anything else.
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