It's December now, but Christmas has been here for months, lurking on store shelves since late summer. The idea of Christmas is on sale everywhere, and the commercialization is intense. Decorations, songs, gifts, snowmen, and Santas are omnipresent, big. Pushy, even.
When you lose someone, there’s a lot of talk about surviving the first year of special days without them: The first birthday (yours and theirs), the first anniversary, the first Christmas. This is because holidays, milestones, and other important moments tend to amplify grief. Once brimming with joy and celebration, special times now bring a sense of foreboding. They are another thing to get through, to carry, to survive.
And it’s not just the days themselves; grief transforms important traditions too. Every small and big thing that brought comfort, meaning, and joy—strings of glowing lights, the scent of pine or balsam fir, a row of stockings—these are harbingers, not of cheer, but of sorrow.
It’s hard to describe the experience of Christmas when you’re in the throes of grief, when the assumptions of peace and joy aren’t met. When every bright glass ball is hollow, empty.
In my grief, Christmas is a demand—it wants something from me that I do not have. It seems to say, “Wrap yourself in that cellophane, curl the ribbon, show us the smile. Cover that death. Slap a bow on it. Call it a gift.”
Christmas is a confrontation. I am too surrounded by bustling houses, shining storefronts, and glowing faces. No matter what, I am on the cold side of the glass, face pressed up against a happiness I don’t feel and can’t escape.
Christmas is grief set ablaze. The glee and excitement feels intrusive. It’s all too much—being yanked back and forth by the discordance of the outside world versus what’s inside me. It feels violent—this seesawing between grief and Christmas cheer. The crashing into what should be but isn’t. The full houses and the empty seats. The barely living and the dead.
There is something uniquely terrible about the year of firsts, and yet, nothing magical happens after that point. Grief isn’t over after a year. The first special days without your person are gruelling, but they aren’t checkpoints in a marathon. We aren’t going to cross a finish line or slice through a ribbon. No one is going to clap at the end and greet us with a Gatorade and a towel.
Our grief won’t be “finished.” Not after a year. Not ever.
Death is forever. And forever lasts long past the year of firsts. There are going to be many big days and important moments without your person, and these won’t all be marked on a calendar.
This is my first Christmas without my husband, Toby. I try to avoid stores, but that’s not always possible. When I do have to go into a store for something, I wear headphones to block out the Christmas music. (Confession: Normally, I love that Mariah Carey Christmas song everyone seems to hate.)
I see people sipping their holiday lattes, wearing their Christmas sweaters, pushing shopping carts full of gifts. I linger over things Toby would have liked. I touch a hat, a jigsaw puzzle, a pair of socks. I imagine buying things for him and setting them under the tree. Again and again, I imagine what should be, but isn’t. I feel the weight of what was taken from Toby, from me, and from everyone else who loved and needed him.
So this is Christmas. I hope you have fun. And I do mean that. Truly. Because you never know what can happen. For those of you who are in grief (or if something else is going on in your life), it’s okay if this time of the year is about survival.
I won’t be serving up holiday baking or decorating a Christmas tree. I’m approaching Christmas as though I’m a tactician in a situation room—reviewing options, weighing risks, thinking about how I can best care for myself during this time.
This is shit. I won’t put a bow on it and pretend otherwise.
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*cover photo by Magne via Unsplash
what relief to not feel alone. It is indeed so shit. always shit. But baubles as you say are hollow. I love that line. and another wonderful line - Christmas is grief set ablaze. This is my fourth december without my son. He would have been 10 on the 28th Dec. I cannot remotely get excited or joyful about this time of year. I accept that now. I'd be happy to wake up tomorrow in January. As always, WRITING HELPS, like nothing else. I also make soup a lot. and plant things. Keep Writing Danielle, sending strength to get through. We only have to get through one hour at a time, one task, one meal, one moment, one bedtime, one thing at a time
After losing my wife of 3 decades it wasn’t our birthdays, thanksgiving, or Christmas that hit me hard. It was New Year’s Eve. The realization that the end of the year was the end of so many things had me curled up in her sister’s spare bedroom. So many what if’s turned into never will be’s.