I still feel that flutter when I hear Elvis Presley belt out Blue Christmas. I was too young when I first heard it to really understand what it was about.
I would sing it with no idea about a “blue Christmas” or the white snow which he referenced. It’s just Blue Eyes’ bluesy tone that warmed the cockles of my hear—even before I knew my heart had cockles.
In my late teens and early adulthood though, I began experiencing blue Christmases. If you’ve ever had one you’d know what I am talking about. If you never did I would never wish it on you.
I had many, and often they were stacked in a row, year after year, season after season.
There were so many I learned to hate Christmas after a while. Not Christmas per se, but the festivities— the music, the decorations, especially those ghastly overdone ones of rivalling neighbours, the shopping, and the indulgence —all became so abhorrent.
In between, I still managed some good celebrations. I began to have a Twelfth-Day-of-Christmas lime. People didn’t quite get it but it was my private “good riddance” to the festivities—I just never told anyone.
I think I had seven years of “Twelfth Day–The Lime.” But it did not heal the blues, it only gave me something to look forward to doing so I was able to pass the holiday “grief” successfully.
My Christmases have been complicated all my life. That happens sometimes especially to some who were born on Christmas Day like I was—7 o’clock they say, December 25.
Growing up, in the last-minute shopping and Christmas Eve decorating, people would wake up on Christmas day and midway through cooking the most extravagant meal of the year, someone would exclaim, “OMG, is the chile birthday!”
Alright, that did not always happen, but somehow I remember the times it happened more than the others! That’s just how disappointment works. And I think if it did not happen when I turned 16, I would be more forgiving about it, too.
Soon after that birthday, I began the troubling journey of living with mental illness. It would take almost three decades of varied Christmas experiences before I found a way to deal with the holidays.
It would take the ‘90s and the advent of the World Wide Web with its wealth of information about holiday blues as a real syndrome even for people who do not live with mental illness. It would take self-resolve to live my best life—the one where I decide to frame and shape my experiences. It would take friends and relatives being accustomed to and respectful of my decisions and backing off with the holiday pressures.
Since I began my journey to empower people to seek and access necessary and appropriate mental health interventions without shame in a country laced with stigma, my advocacy has taught me about preparing for every event (I don’t always listen).
This year I decided to count down my birthday from December 1, on my Facebook account. It is so strange an exercise for me that close friends are asking questions like “So 21 is your age?”, “What are you counting girl?”
I’ve resolved this year I won’t even get upset about that song that goes, “Laughing children tug at Mr Santa, ah-ah-ah-aah,” (you know it’s the refrain that raises the annoyance). Some people love the track so I accept that it’s on the radio for them.
I am having a positive Christmas, that’s my decision. I am able to do so even more because this year when the pressures threatened to derail me, I called in the troops.
I enlisted for talk-therapy and began a course of medication after four years of being “drug free.” I am taking what my son Jovan long ago dubbed “my happy pills.”
I am the positive representation of Christmas for everyone who suffers with the blues. I am advocating for adopting more appropriate holiday colours – reds, greens, whites, even. Let’s beat the blues.