Not long before she died, I was driving my mother somewhere when she suddenly said – “There’s something I need to tell you. I want to say how sorry I am for not bringing you home for Christmas when you were at university. I know you wanted to come home but I didn’t have the money. But I guess I could have borrowed the money from your grandfather.” And she started to cry.

I froze in shock. No words would come to me.

First of all, my mother and I were not close. I cannot remember us ever having a deep or meaningful conversation. We certainly never spoke about how I felt about anything.

Next, the last thing I wanted to do when I was at university was come home for Christmas.

I grew up witnessing my mother’s distress every Christmas. She had this powerful dream of what the perfect Christmas should be. She was never able to achieve this. So she was always unhappy on Christmas Day. My memory of her is of tears on Christmas Day because everything was not the way she wanted it. No amount of church going, praying, etc. could make up for this. And there was a lot of that.

My mother grew up in the Colonial Era and was brought up to believe that English customs and culture were superior. To make matters worse, she worked in the Governor’s Office and saw herself as an extension of the English Establishment.

We live in a hot tropical country.

We tried very hard to do what she wanted. Even my father. He organised all of us into a flurry of house painting, varnishing of furniture, blowing of balloons, hanging of decorations, putting up of tree, hanging of new curtains, etc. My father was not famous for trying to please my mother but for most of his life he tried at Christmas.

One of my fond memories is of my father “creating” Christmas trees. When I was very young, I think we couldn’t afford what my mother thought was a ‘real’ Christmas tree. During this time my father learned how to make a Christmas tree out of rope and sticks. He organised those of us who were old enough to help. I learned how to fray out the rope and watched him dye it green. I don’t remember how he wired it to make the branches but I remember that I loved the creative process. Another time I remember us making a ‘tree’ out of a dried branch and decorating it with cotton (it had to have ‘snow’) and tinsel and angel hair and the ornaments that my mother so carefully kept packed away. Again, I thought the creative process was wonderful. My mother cried. It was not a real tree.

After some years, my father found out that he could buy real pine trees (Caribbean Pine but still..) So, we traipsed down to the Forestry Division and brought a tree. This made my mother a little happier. It was more like the picture in her head.

As my father grew older, he withdrew more and more. Eventually, he wouldn’t even open his gifts. He would put them, unopened, in a cupboard. Finally, he wouldn’t even sit at the Christmas table for lunch.

The whole gift giving business was another source of distress to me. On several levels.

I come from a very large family. My mother insisted that everybody had to get a present – her children, her sisters, brothers, their children, various family connections, etc. At the same time, she was very distressed that she didn’t have enough money to do what she wanted. For her, it was an obligation, a duty.

I downloaded this distress pattern from her – wholesale.

I escaped some of this by living out of the country for some years. But sometimes I would come home for Christmas. Incredible yes?

The showers of gifts from my family distressed me because I didn’t have the money to reciprocate in kind. I was very glad though that my sons got so many beautiful things that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Eventually, over the years this became almost an orgy. About half the living room would be taken up with piles of gifts – each heap assigned to a specific person. When the time to open gifts came, the children were encouraged to dive into their piles, rip the wrapping paper off, perhaps exclaim about the gift, and rapidly move on to the next one. There were sometimes shouts of: “Look how many things I got!” Cameras flashed. The adults cheered.

I felt sick inside.

There were many other things that distressed me. The excessive amounts of food and my mother driving herself into a frenzy to make all the things that we ‘must’ have. My mother crying again when my siblings got married and had to share the time at Christmas with their in-laws and, as a result, were late for lunch.

None of this resonated with my core values but I felt obliged to do what was expected of me. I felt pulled in different directions. Unhappy.

But there were good things also.

As a result of my childhood experiences, I learned how to paint – properly. Even now, I paint my own house.

From my mother I learned to make pastelles (a family tradition that lasts up to today) and Christmas cake.

But the overall question that still remains with me – What on earth does all this have to do with Christmas and the birth of Christ?

So many patterns of resentment and distress were laid in early and my children and everybody close to me suffered as a result.

I swung wildly between forcing myself to do all the things expected of me at Christmas and not wanting to do anything at all.

I keep dreaming of going somewhere where there is absolutely no sign of Christmas but so far, I haven’t gone.

Stay tuned to find out how I managed to achieve some degree of peace!!

If Christmas is a difficult time for you and you could use some support, I am offering the gift of a session with me! Just contact me via email at cheryl@thinkittalkit.com to make arrangements. All sessions are virtual, so it doesn’t matter where you live.