Post-Thanksgiving Stress Disorder
Thanksgiving is such a wonderful holiday. Other than the massive amount of cooking and cleanup, what’s not to love? Food, family, friends, everyone sending those cute texts with emojis and gifs expressing how thankful they are for each other. Leftovers forever. An extra-long weekend. It’s an all-around perfect holiday.
But come Monday, reality hits. Christmas is less than four weeks away. Christmas! Ahhh! What evil human came up with this schedule?
Out comes the to-do list. And it’s ENDLESS.
Decorating. Decorating. Decorating. Did I mention decorating? Every year, it gets harder and harder to haul those boxes up from the basement. Half the twinkle lights don’t work. Everything needs batteries, which of course we are all out of. And baby Jesus is missing from the nativity scene.
The tree. Traipsing through fields, searching for the least Charlie-Brown-looking tree that might fit in the house and not drop all its needles by Wednesday. I know we could get a pre-lit fake one–just another huge box to haul up from the basement. And what if the lights stop working? What do you do then?
Shopping! Something that should be fun now has become a chore.
Money cards for the mailman, the UPS guy (so maybe he will stop throwing the packages in the shrubbery), the Amazon guy, the hair stylist, the dog groomer, and everyone else I meet on a semi-monthly basis.
Wrapping. Never having the right size gift bag, cutting the paper an inch too short, running out of tape, getting a whole gift wrapped and then forgetting who it’s for.
Meal planning. Not just one meal, mind you. There’s Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas Brunch, Christmas Dinner, and the meals for all those who stay until New Year’s, not to mention cocktail parties, office luncheons, cookie exchanges, charity events, and potluck suppers. This usually involved to the store at midnight for sugar and eggs on more than one occasion.
Well, you know the drill. Christmas is stressful. Every year we ask ourselves, why do we do this?
Let’s face it, loving other people takes effort. You can’t just talk about it, you have to do it. And Christmas is one time of year we’re sort of forced to do it. To think about other people, and to show them how much we love and appreciate them, not just with emojis either. That may not be such a bad thing.
There are many who say we Christians shouldn’t celebrate Christmas at all. It’s a pagan holiday, started when the early missionaries hoped to convert pagans by giving pagan holidays Christian themes. Christmas takes place on the winter solstice, also the celebration of the birth of Apollo. Some traditions, like mistletoe and Christmas trees, may have pagan or secular roots. There is no biblical mandate to celebrate Christmas, after all—it’s a purely Christian invention. The hardliners say we should be celebrating only those feasts God specified in the Bible.
Those folks may be right. I don’t deny they have a point. Still, any opportunity to show other people how much you love them can’t be a bad thing. After all, Jesus said of his followers, “They will know you by your love.”
How do we deal with PTSD? With love.
GINA DETWILER is the author of the newly released THE ULTIMATE BIBLE CHARACTER DEVOTIONAL, the companion to the ULTIMATE BIBLE CHARACTER GUIDE. She has also written the YA Supernatural series FORLORN and is the co-author of THE PRINCE WARRIORS SERIES with Priscilla Shirer.
