Why Christmas Makes Me Cry
The Post-Holiday Blues And COVID
A couple of days before Christmas I heard a song on NPR while out shopping. The song was Adam Weiner’s Christmas Makes Me Cry, recently written for the Morning Edition’s Song Project. It nearly brought me to tears. Although the title was written during a college break years before, the song captured beautifully the hauntingly sad sense of loneliness and isolation that many of us are feeling almost a year into the worst Pandemic in 100 years. It would not be a normal Christmas this year, despite my buying a six-foot Christmas tree and stringing solar lights around the outdoor foliage to cheer myself up. There would be only a handful of gifts under the tree. Many I would be mailing to people I wouldn’t see.
And yet Christmas Eve was magical, ushered in by the first rain of the year in drought-ridden Los Angeles, bringing enough cold weather to warrant a blazing fire in the fireplace. My son showed up from med school, where he’d been one of the first to receive the COVID vaccine, a true Christmas gift. Later, my sister arrived after months of living like a monk in her one-bedroom apartment. We all wore our masks and sipped Prosecco outside on the patio before dinner; then found our appropriately distanced seats in the living room a shout away from each other. At least we were together. Most of my friends and family (many of them single) were spending it alone — totally alone — wishing each other merry Christmas on zoom or by phone. I felt a little guilty allowing three people from three different households to gather. And I’d been so looking forward to it.
My son decided to drive home Christmas night, even though the school wouldn’t pick up for another ten days. Normally, he’d have stayed the whole week. It was doubtful, too, when I’d see my sister next, even though she lived ten minutes away. We’d already exposed ourselves to each other for a longer time than we had in a year. Only my son could be assured of not getting COVID from our naughty rendezvous, but he, more than anyone else, had to wear a mask to protect us. The masks were becoming uncomfortable and tiring.
When everyone was gone I took off my mask, slipped into bed, looking forward to a long night's sleep with my two cats who would hopefully let me sleep in, only to enjoy the next day unencumbered by entertaining or getting back to work. I would stay in bed, have tea or coffee, and read until noon. Having taken a couple of extra days off, I would catch up on gardening or household tasks and just putter around, doing nothing. What joy!
But then it hit, the Post-Holiday Blues. I’d experienced them before, but always after a huge build-up and days of celebrating. It was mostly after New Year’s that they’d unexpectedly seep in. But I’d be working this New Year’s because all my clients would be home, even if they worked. No one was traveling. No one planned to attend parades or parties or herald in the new year outdoors in crowds, grateful to say goodbye to 2020. In fact, for many of us, it would be just another day. Another day of the Pandemic. Another day of not having something to look forward to. That was the darkest part. All the goodbyes after the holidays were normally followed by plans for the next meeting, be it a holiday, a summer vacation, a conference, or just “See you this spring.” Not this year. Who knows when I’d see anyone. I had nothing on the docket, nothing to look forward to.
I remembered getting a call the week after New Years' one year. It was early in my career as a psychotherapist. I was told that a former client of mine had shot himself to death on New Year's Eve. I was beyond shocked, horror-stricken, and despairing. I realized that he’d decided to end his life weeks before, feeling he had nothing to look forward to. Alone, shunned by many people, only one friend to his name, and struggling with a developmental disability, he had little more to live for than his sessions with me. A couple of weeks before Christmas he told me the commute was too long and asked me for a referral to someone closer to home. I’d arranged for him to see someone who lived in his town, even though I didn’t know her. I assumed she would be a good fit, and that he’d call her. As a parting gift, he’d wrapped a tin of New England Syrup for me, perhaps symbolic of all the sweetness he never experienced in life. Without realizing it, the gift would be his last. And he knew it. He knew he could not face another year. He had no intention of calling the other therapist.
I often tell the interns I supervise to be on alert in January because it has a higher rate of suicides than any other month of the year. Fortunately, that is no longer true. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reports that suicides are lowest in December and then peak in the spring and fall. Nonetheless, most therapists are aware of the high number of people suffering from depression during and after the holiday season. Psychology Today describes this time as a period with at least some kind of disappointment, anxiety, or even sadness, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 64 percent of people report feeling depressed during the holidays. Symptoms of post-holiday blues include insomnia, low-energy, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and a kind of general anxiety and/or depression. Experts attribute this come down to a kind of adrenaline crash, an abrupt withdrawal of stress hormones, or the “contrast effect,” which essentially means the brain’s way of adjusting to radically different experiences, restoring order, and the status quo. It’s as if our brain gears up for the holidays, and even if they are dismal, a return to everyday life may seem disproportionately more anxiety-inducing and depressing than it really is.
Fancy foods and fatigue also play a part. Days, even weeks, of high sugar diets, lots of alcohol, and late-night parties may leave us over-indulged and exhausted, like a month induced hangover. The hangover may be economic as well. Most of us spend more of our income at Christmastime than at any other time of the year, except maybe annual vacations. The loosening of the wallet begins as early as October. By December buying becomes almost frenzied. The need to buy the best gift gives way to buying the most gifts or the most expensive gift, the “Wow” gift! On the other hand, having no money for Christmas gifts inspires despair and feelings of unworthiness, while over-spending sparks guilt and remorse once the credit card balances come due or when what you spent so much money on is received with a mild or nonchalant, “Thanks.”
For some people, especially kids, Christmas can bring disappointment. In my practice, I often hear stories about childhood excitement and expectation that was dashed by not receiving the longed-for gift or even no gift at all. One woman said she literally found coal under the tree, a reminder of how “bad” she’d been that year. Another client was so disappointed about not receiving the gift he begged his parents for that he never celebrated the holidays as an adult, never bought a Christmas tree, rarely bought gifts. He viewed Christmas as a holiday of betrayal. Indeed, for some, Christmas can be a holiday that makes you want to cry.
Fortunately, for most of us, the Post-Holiday Blues are short-lived. They may be felt most intensely before, during, or after the holidays, whenever we anticipate their ending and a return to normal. My son told me last year that he always feels a little sad Christmas night, as the sun sinks on both the holiday and his birthday, a double whammy! For me, it’s the day the Christmas tree comes down, which is usually the day after New Years'. The house is back to normal, whatever that is. This year, it’s back to the Pandemic, awaiting a cure and a chance to hug family and friends after more than a year of only petting my cats. I am also reminded of how few years I probably have left and how many people I’ve lost over the years. Whether from Covid, cancer or freak accidents, the holidays remind us of who used to be here. It reminds us that another year has ended, that we’re growing up, or we’re growing old.
The year 2020 will never be forgotten. It will be remembered as the year we survived; we endured, and perhaps learned to appreciate things we always took for granted, like home for the holidays. We will start gearing up for the next one in January and will welcome it like none other. Then, as the festivities draw to a close and the sun rises in 2021, that dark, sinking feeling may set in, as it always does, reminding us that joy and sorrow follow each other and eventually join.
