Merry Expectations

I rushed down the stairs. It was the first Christmas morning that my husband and I spent together since we’d moved north three years earlier. Christmas was finally here and for the first time shift work wasn’t stymying our efforts to spend the day together. I was as giddy as a five-year-old. Christmas! My excitement stemmed from the vision I had for the morning. We’d rise early. We’d enjoy the coziness of candlelight in the entirely dark Yukon mornings. We’d have coffee. And some Baileys. A special Christmas breakfast followed by opening the carefully colour-coordinated packages that lay under the tree. Then we’d head out for a ski with Chilli before the noon sunrise. We’d watch an old Christmas movie…and on and on.

The day was planned to the last detail. And then. C slept in. Of course, he did. Overtime, night shifts, and a night owl predisposition predicted it, but I did not. I was too wrapped up in my vision of the perfect Christmas day to consider that perhaps C should sleep in. And when my vision of a perfect Christmas started to unravel as the day marched on, I became more and more disappointed and emotional. 

Poor C wasn’t expecting to find me – a tightly wound ball of stress – the way he did that morning.

This week, while at work, the kiddos, my colleagues, and I sat in a circle as we do each morning. We’d completed our mindfulness exercise and moved to a question one of the teachers had posed: “What do you like most about Christmas?” 

I’ve always loved Christmas. But when presented with this question, I struggled to answer. When my turn came, I responded that I find the traditions most meaningful, especially now that I live farther from my family. I thought about my answer for the rest of the day because it wasn’t quite right. 

And then I realised: It’s the expectations that I love most about Christmas. But they are also what I dislike the most. 

If you’re like me, your Christmas anticipation begins soon after Halloween. It starts with Christmas music. Then slowly, one by one at first, and then a wave of Christmas decorations emerges. There’s the gift preparation and planning. The recipes. The vision. The expectations.

In many ways, our modern society sets up those expectations. Store shelves lined with the latest and greatest products we’re all told we need.Advertisements that show happiness, warmth, and uninhibited generosity and consumption. Movies with happy endings. What we’re exposed to shapes our expectations, and in the months leading up to Christmas, we can’t help but be exposed to all things that set the bar high. 

And yet, as much as I love Christmas, I find that I always feel sad when the day comes around. It’s a complicated sadness. A sadness I feel a bit ashamed of because in many ways it’s self-imposed. But it’s also a sadness about the macro-level expectation that exists around Christmas. The naïve belief that everyone who celebrates Christmas is happy and has family and friends and loved ones with whom to share in the holiday festivities. Maybe these are just expectations born from the childhood belief that Santa Clause brought gifts to everyone, regardless of their circumstances. That the gifts symbolized peace and contentment and that the universal experience was simply good. And of course, those expectations of Christmas could not be further from the truth. 

Right now, the world around me has felt heavy. Family members in failing health, friends experiencing significant life challenges and mental health crises. And that’s just the world close to me. Ripples of heaviness extend much, much farther. This year, more than ever, I recognize that the expectation of a perfect Christmas for all who celebrate is impossible.

Before I moved north, I worked at a bakery. For fifteen years, the bakery was an important part of my life. Through high school, undergrad, and graduate school, and at the bakery, Christmas was an especially wonderful time of year. The busy hustle and bustle. The excited energy and the generosity. And yet, poignant moments punctuated these pre-Christmas shifts. Moments of realisation that a customer’s Christmas would be spent alone, or grieving, or in challenging circumstances. It dawned on me that all the preparations and all the excitement leading up to the day might be particularly burdensome to people whose circumstances were challenging.

But it’s more than that. Because even for people who are in a good place mentally and physically, Christmas can be a struggle. My five-year-old-like excitement in my thirties is bound to be dashed. No matter how much effort we put into creating a perfect day, the normal quirks and the bigger cracks of everyday life creep in. No matter our happiness, sadness is never all that far away.

I say all that, and I know it, but still I anticipate Christmas with joy and excitement. Even though I know it’s unrealistic, I imagine it will be perfect. And I guess what I try to hold onto is that all those moments of anticipation are perfect. And the day is perfect too. Because perfection is self-imposed and because hardships are always around us, but beautiful moments are around us too. Maybe Christmas is about grasping those moments and marvelling because no matter how small, no matter how fleeting, there are things for which we can be grateful.

That Christmas that didn’t go as I’d imagined it would has turned into a story in our lives. A story about compromise and being able to adapt. A story about gratitude.