Christmas Hurts

A season of warmth, and the shadow beside it

Christmas was always really important to my mom.

Not “important” in the way people casually say that and then buy a wreath at CVS on December 23rd. Important in the way it becomes a ritual. A craft. A love language.

Every year, she made ornaments.

For everyone.

And not the normal kind. Not “buy a glass ball and write someone’s name on it.” I mean she made ornaments like a person who had decided the holiday season was a small artistic residency.

A lot of people don’t know this about her: she was the oldest of twelve.

Twelve.

Which means Christmas wasn’t just a holiday in our house. It was a logistical event. A family ecosystem. A web of siblings and spouses and children and memories that all needed to be held together with something tangible.

And that “something” for my mom was crafts.

Arts and crafts, in the most sincere, un-ironic way. Glue guns. Paint. Bits of felt. Strange little objects that only made sense once she transformed them into “Christmas.”

I can still picture us sitting around the house making some of the strangest ornaments you can imagine.

There’s one year that stays lodged in my brain. It might have been one of the last few before she died.

We went out and collected pieces of palm trees that had fallen down — these odd, curved pieces that, if you squinted, looked like reindeer heads.

So we did what any sane family does: we turned them into reindeer heads.

We made these palm-tree reindeer ornaments and sent them to all her family members.

It was ridiculous and perfect and completely her.

That’s what she did. She made people feel included. Remembered. Part of a shared story. The ornament wasn’t the point. The point was the message inside it: I thought of you. I made you something. You’re in my circle.

And then she died.

And the thing about a ritual that belonged to someone you love is that, once they’re gone, the ritual doesn’t disappear.

It keeps showing up.

It sits there in the room like a chair that still has a shape, even when no one is sitting in it.

So the importance Christmas had to her translated into pain for me.

Not because I suddenly hated Christmas. Actually, I liked it. I liked the warmth of it. The impulse toward connection. The fact that people, at least for a few weeks, try a little harder to be kind.

But Christmas took on a different significance.

It became a reminder of something that meant so much to her — and now she wasn’t here to live it.

And in those years right after she died, the pain was so strong that I had to shut down emotionally in a specific way.

Not “shut down” like I was cold. More like I had to keep a lid on something volatile.

Because if I let the pain in, even a little, I felt like I would be on the verge of tears all the time.

You know that feeling? Where you’re fine until you’re not. Where the smallest crack in the dam and suddenly you’re in public trying to act normal while your entire internal world is wobbling.

I remember weird stories of overreacting to things that weren’t actually that big a deal.

A minor inconvenience. A comment. Something small. And I’d respond as if the universe had personally wronged me.

And of course, we all know why.

When you suppress feelings, they come out sideways.

They come out contorted.

They come out wearing disguises.

Grief is like that. It doesn’t just live in sadness. It lives in irritability. In impatience. In the sudden sharpness you don’t recognize as yourself. In the way your body tries to release what your mind refuses to let you touch.

That was me for many years.

And then… time did what time does.

It didn’t erase the wound.

But it changed it.

It scarred.

It softened around the edges.

It became something I could hold without needing to run from it.

Eventually, I could cherish the pain instead of avoiding it.

Which sounds strange until you’ve lived it.

Because the pain isn’t just pain. It’s also a kind of proof. Proof that someone mattered. Proof that love happened. Proof that you were lucky enough to have something you would miss that much.

So now, during this season, I always think back to those early years after her death.

I think about how hard it was.

And I try to remember that when I’m interacting with other people.

Because losing someone is amplified during the holidays.

It’s amplified at the exact times you’re supposed to feel cozy.

It’s amplified in the rituals. The smells. The songs. The decorations. The stupid little traditions you didn’t even realize were emotional landmines.

The holidays don’t just bring joy.

They bring memory.

And memory is complicated.

So if you find yourself shutting down this season… or overreacting… or feeling strangely flat… or randomly on the verge of tears while standing in line for coffee…

You’re not broken.

You might just be carrying someone you loved through a season that refuses to forget.

And if that’s you, I hope you can be gentle with yourself.

I hope you can let the grief be what it is without making it mean something is wrong with you.

Sometimes holiday emotions aren’t a problem to solve.

They’re love, still moving.

Even when it hurts.