I get the Christmas blues every year.
I used to pretend I felt peace, love, joy and unfettered happiness throughout the month of December — just the way all those sermons, songs and Folger’s coffee commercials told me I should. It was mostly just an act.
Beginning just before Thanksgiving each year, my brain’s amygdala begins receiving somewhat skewed memories from its hippocampus about “ghosts of Christmas past.” (I know this is a bit technical for Sunday morning reading over breakfast. I guess I should have just said Elvis Presley suddenly appears at my bedside and begins to croon, “I’ll have a blue Christmas without you.”)
These memories of “Christmas past” would be easier to put aside and just “soldier on,” if they only dealt with a few tragic events I have lived through during the holidays — the death of my father right after Thanksgiving when I was a teenager in 1961, or the passing of my mother on New Year’s Day in 1983.
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Problem is, nearly every memory through six decades of Christmases is precisely a memory of peace, love, joy and happiness — but many are in settings now lost in time, along with a lot of long-gone friends and loved ones. Without a conscious effort to the contrary, Elvis and I can spend a month wallowing in a longing for “what once was” and missing a good portion of the wonder of “what now is.”
Truth is, my Christmases never have been more wonderful than they are today. Elvis is all wrong as he warbles, “I’ll be so blue just thinking about you” as if no alternative exists. Still, the battle between my amygdala and my hippocampus goes on year after year as the calendar counts down to Dec. 25.
Through the years, I have tried various ways to escape the blues, in order to keep joyous family members and friends from having to turn to me in the middle of the celebration to ask: “What’s wrong? Is there too much lemon in the wassail?”
Years ago I tried medicating myself with alcohol to get through it all. (I have no warm, blue memories of that Christmas. In fact, I don’t remember most of that day at all.) Another year, my doctor prescribed an anxiety medication that made me want to climb the Christmas tree. (Never tried that again.)
What does seem to work a bit is the acceptance by friends and family members that I am likely to play the part of Scrooge or the Grinch through most of December. And I particularly am cheered by their efforts to distract me.
They roust me from my online shopping and force me to go out to a real store with real shoppers to buy presents. They play “Dominic the Italian Christmas Donkey” (a tune for which I have no nostalgic memories) as background music. They take me with them on drives around town to show my granddaughter the Christmas lights.
All those techniques work a bit because of the love I know they put into the effort. I know deep in my heart — in spite of my sappy brain and Elvis Presley — that love is the reason for the season — that love is not about yesterday or today alone.
To remind me of that, my wife and I always put up our Charlie Brown Christmas tree with the drooping limbs and the single bulb. It was given to me by a close friend and co-worker 15 years ago after she had lived through my “bah, humbug” Christmas attitudes at the office for several years.
Every time I look at that sad little tree, I smile. I may never get over my Christmas season blues completely, but knowing I share the problem with Charlie Brown gives me reason to hope.
Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. His weekly column appears on the Opinion page each Sunday. Contact him at editorial@therepublic.com.
