Christmas Holiday time is actually a SAD time for me, so I'm starting to dread them ALREADY. Anyone else?

Yea, there’s tons of stuff that you can do if you don’t want to have a pity party for yourself. Volunteer to collect toys from those toy bins. Volunteer in a soup kitchen.

There’s a bunch of ways you can help the less fortunate. It will really help you appreciate how fantastic your crappy holiday really is.

I try to make myself pretty unavailable on the holidays. It’s only a happy time for normal people. I relate to you.

Doesn’t work for me. I even put in to WORK those days and you say to yourself “Look at that, I’m working on Christmas because the holidays suck.”

Hah. Sorry brother. I do feel your pain. Holidays are overrated anyway.

Maybe do something really nice for one person or family. When you start to get bummed, think about the fantastic thing you did. That should make you happier about it. Maybe?

Why do you find the holidays to be a sad time? Just curious.

Me_M,
If it’s to painful my feelings won’t be hurt if you say “mind your own business,” but did you have some traumatic experience surrounding Christmas? I am so sorry that you’re already dreading it.
When my kids were little their dad died a tragic death. The first major holiday was Thanksgiving. I decided that the traditional family dinner would just be to hard for any of us to bear. Instead, we planned a trip to Disneyland and had Thanksgiving dinner at Medieval Times. My daughter (6 at the time) who was having the hardest time hid her shoes on the morning we were supposed to leave and basically made the trip miserable for everyone. When we finally went to dinner something changed. She got really wrapped up in the magic of it all. She was screaming and cheering and smiled for the first time in 10 months. Then a little miracle happened. The Knights would throw a carnation (that the Queen gave him when he won) into the crowd in their section. When our Knight won he leaned over the rail and handed Missy the carnation. He will never know what a special gift that was to that hurting little girl and he probably still wonders why her mom was crying.
The next year we were strong enough to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but holidays were still tough. Eventually they became a time of reflecting the good memories and creating new ones.
The decision to change the tradition that year in a small way changed the direction of Missy’s life. Her fascination with Knight’s and castles never really wained and when she got married she could not think of a better place than Scotland to go on her honeymoon. My wish for you is that you will find a way to transform your sorrow into joy, and that painful memories will fade and be replaced by the glimmers of good that have happened and are yet to come.

I don’t like it either. It reminds me of my mom and how much I miss her. i hate the whole stress of presents.

There is huge stress in all the stuff the family expects: decorating the house, getting a tree, decorating the tree, undecorating the tree, getting presents, wrapping presents, cleaning up present mess afterwards, making travel plans, making vacation plans, making meal plans, baking cookies, matching up to my wife’s holiday expectations and obsession.

I dread it. There is no moment to relax and enjoy for me.

However, it makes the kids really happy.

I really wanted us to disappear for Christmas this year—take a vacation somewhere, but we didn’t plan it, and now with what’s happening to the economy, that’s not gonna happen.

I have better things to do, than celebrate it.

It loses it’s appeal/allure, the moment you start getting clothing, instead of toys.

@jack;
It comes back (at least fror me) when you get to GIVE toys!

I give gifts all year long, and yes, it is a terrific feeling!

I can’t share the reasons. Sorry.

Lurve to ya anyway my monkey friend!

Mr_M, I won’t try to pressure you into revealing your reasons, but please allow me to remind you that I (and probably most of the others in here) don’t know your true identity.

That’s why I can usually say exactly what is on my mind, and share things that I would not normally share with others, if my real name were posted here.

I pretty much completely ignore the holidays.

My immediate family is fine, but my extended family gets more and more dysfunctional with each passing year. So travelling hundreds of miles to gorge myself on turkey with people I can’t stand—not an option.

And Christmas is just set up for frustration: all the pressure to buy buy buy, to show your love with money, and then the forced grins when your family spent a whole lot of money on stuff you didn’t want or need.

So I avoid them the best I can.

This may be the Christmas (with economics the way they are) for people to make Christmas gifts again and create family experiences instead of focusing on gifts.

I like Judi’s answer about creating “experiences”.

Last year, at Christmas breakfast, my whole family (4 daughters and mom and dad) went around the table and told each other person one thing we loved about them. It was so great! I thought it sounded sappy and lame, but it ended up setting the tone for the rest of the day with everyone being sweet to one another. Having a sister that is close in age to me, it was especially nice to hear her say those things. You never know when you might not get a chance to say why you love someone.

Ok, cue the gagging sounds from the Fluther! =)

I have a really hard time with the holidays myself. Actually from Sept. till January I seem to be in a ‘blah’ mood. It started a long time ago and I haven’t been able to beat it yet.

I hate the holidays. They were some of the best times with my family and my parents died when I was 20. It’s been almost 8 years and I have a wonderful husband and amazing stepdaughter but I still can’t get over the dread of the holidays…

The best holidays I have ever had have been when we went away completely. We used to go to the ocean. No tree, no expectations, no shopping, no craziness. That might work better than work. You are doing something special for yourself, but you are not tied to the all of the normal expectations.

The best advice I saw was to do something else. I used to go to Germany after Christmas to visit friends and it gave me something to look forward to while I was getting through the holidays. In any way you dice it, doing something makes you feel like “why am I doing this?” If you try to make Christmas so special for someone else then you wonder was something really wrong with the christmases I had as a child? I can remember being sent to my room, yelled at, family fights and more. I never got useful gifts even though I spent tons of money trying to make others happy. Now people wonder why I don’t give them gifts. It’s a ridiculous holiday that is out of control. I get way more excited about people’s birthdays including my own children’s. The expectations are always high and people who have the perfect family (and they’re few and far between) just look at you like you moved from the moon when you don’t have answer to “What are you doing for Christmas?” I spent THOUSANDS of dollars this year thinking it might somehow be better, but it’s not. My kids are happy, but they need not have Christmas for me to buy them these toys. I love them just as much every day. I love Jesus just as much every day. When I finally watched the kids open the gifts from my mother in law this morning, I lost it. She sent handmedown stuff from thrity years ago that the kids don’t need and I don’t want them to have. There amongst there new toys was the old used stuff and it was out and I couldn’t undo it and I would never want my kids to think it’s ok to give used things as a gift. It was like a dagger in my heart and within an hour every remnant of Christmas had been removed from our house. I just don’t think I can do it again in the future. I wish I had spent $3K on taking my kids to a beach resort in Mexico. It would have been far more memorable. Screw these people who think they should be getting a gift from us because it’s “that time of the year.” That’s what birthdays are for.

You must be hurting. I’m sorry to hear that this time of year. Some people REALLY suck. And the people that have “normal” families can not even CONCEIVE of a relative who is no good.