Christmas Cheer!
[ 17 December 2007 ]
“It’s Christmas time as you know. Usually one of my favourite times, but this year, I’m not excited. Nothing is exciting me. I find it terribly upsetting but nothing is triggering those wonderful memories. All I can think about is the bad from last year, the things I don’t want to do this season. Needless to say sugarplums are not dancing in my head. I’ve drunk eggnog, hot cocoa, eaten candy canes… Still I find myself rather Grinch-ish. Are there any thoughts or ideas you could give me to brighten my cheer?”
Aw, darling! Sounds like you have the Christmas blues, like Dean Martin! Don’t worry, you’re not alone. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the crazy consumerism of Christmas & feel estranged from the positive aspects of the season.
To get rid of all the bad stuff from last year that is plaguing you, I suggest you try something which seems a little bit kooky but works. Lie down somewhere that you won’t be disturbed. Breathe deeply & get relaxed. Picture yourself on top of the world (it doesn’t have to be to scale!), & visualise a cord coming out of your spine. Have this cord connect you to the centre of the earth. I always see it like I’m dropping anchor — when my cord hits the centre of the earth, I visualise an anchor wrapping around the core of the planet. Now, imagine that cord is like a garbage chute. Allow all of the negative energy & ugly rubbish inside you going down that cord & disappearing into the middle of the earth. Okay, now picture a big jug. Take that jug & scoop some light off the sun. Pour that light all over you, from head to toe. Saturate yourself in it.
Now! Picture a huge rose off to one side of you. I always see a big Dali rose, but that’s just how I do! On the other side of you, make a movie of all the bad things which have happened this year. Maybe you stubbed your toe & your dog peed on your favourite coat — just see all that stuff happening. Grab it & throw it on the rose. Watch the rose soak it up. Then move that rose out of your house. Down the street, past the buildings, to the nearest body of water, like the ocean or a huge lake. Picture blowing it up like it was full of dynamite — just explode it. That’s all you need to do. I know it sounds very odd, but EFT sounds weird too, & that works, so you never know! Putting events into a rose & blowing it up is a really good thing to do before you go to sleep, too, if your mind is full of what’s been going on.
Okay, time to tackle the Christmas cheer dilemma! Here are my suggestions.
Buy pointsettias or Christmas lilies
Flowers are a fantastic way to raise your levels of happiness, regardless of the season — but at Christmas, buying something which smacks of the season is the best. Pointsettias are known as a classic Christmas bloom, as are Christmas lilies (my favourite). I have Christmas lilies on my desk right now, & they smell fantastic as well as providing entertainment — they’ve been opening today, which is a delight to observe.
Google “christmas events” + (your city)
Most cities have a lot of things going on over the Christmas period, not all of them for children (though it can be fun to get a photo with Santa, regardless of your age). For example, in Melbourne, one of the city squares has a big plastic Christmas tree which plays jazzed-up Christmas tunes, & there’s a light show on the ground next to it which makes it look like it’s snowing. I love it! There will surely be something weird & seasonal happening near you — all you have to do is find it!
Put up a Christmas tree
It doesn’t have to be big — even a teeny one the size of your hand will do the trick. One year, my parents & I spent Christmas in Noumea, & since we were going to be staying in a hotel room, my mother decided we should bring Christmas with us. She carried a little plastic tree with her onto the plane, through customs, & out the other side. All the airport staff thought we were hilarious. Anyway, trimming a tree is a lovely thing to do & will definitely help get you into the spirit. If you don’t want to spend lots of money, decorate whatever plants you have in your house. Tie a red ribbon around the pot of a cactus, or string pearls around the trunk of a ficus. Also, IKEA has amazingly inexpensive fairy lights, some of which are battery powered — perfect for winding around branches.
Go & see other people’s Christmas decorations
There is always one crazy street which is the Christmas street. There are so many lights draped over the houses that the whole area is like daylight all the time. Find out where this happens in your town, & then go & gawk! Remember to take a camera (& maybe a tripod) so you can nab some fantastic pictures.
Watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
“Hallelujah! ... Holy sh#t! ... Where’s the Tylenol?!” is my new text message alert tone.
Go to a Christmas service
I know that churches aren’t everyone’s cup of tea — they’re not mine either, really. But I do love Christmas carols. I think it’s part of my Anglican school upbringing — I just adore them. There is something magnificent about groups of people singing together. See? Even if you aren’t very familiar with most Christmas songs, go to a carol service just to listen. I promise you will feel happier & full of hope when it’s over.
Start compiling a Christmas playlist
Preferably made up of songs which don’t make you want to throw yourself out the window. Try things like Run DMC’s Christmas In Hollis & Eartha Kitt’s Santa Baby. & don’t forget Wham’s Last Christmas! Love the hair, Georgey Baby!
If Christmas seems too pointless…
...Watch this & focus on something else, as well as printing & distributing this poster.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Super-love & cupcakes,
Gala
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No Christmas compilation is anywhere near complete without ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ by Mariah Carey!! It’s cheesey, yes, but it’s happy :)
kp — I loooove that song, haha. But I didn’t include it because it’s evil! It never leaves your head, & I know most people loathe it ;D
i absolutely love christmas. i think it’s the best time of the year so i think these are brilliant suggestions.
i recently came across a guy who was starting up an “i hate christmas, i’m completely sick of it” club with a few of his friends.
to show him why christmas shouldn’t be hated, i made him a little acordian book listing all of my favourite things about christmas.
not only was he stoked that someone had taken the time to do that, it made him think twice about christmas.
also, my house mate had never had a proper family christmas before.
so we went out and bought tonnes of tinsel and decorated the house. then we put up a christmas tree.
it was the best thing i’ve ever done & now she’s so excited about christmas she’s giving me a run for my money!!
i’ve found these two simple acts makes christmas a little brighter.
i think the key is to do these things with your friends or family – makes things even more fun!
another brilliant post, gala :o)
brody — The anti-Christmas patrol aren’t a lot of fun. Sure, we don’t all believe in Jesus or want to spend millions of dollars on people we barely know. But you can’t deny the beauty of a Christmas tree, fairy lights or giving gifts to people you love. Even if you forget about the religious significance, at the core, it’s a very positive time. My mother is mental about Christmas & her excitement has rubbed off on me. She puts red ribbons around everything… including the dining table & fireplace!
Love that Mariah song! Totally my fave! AND the version in ‘Love Actually’ is also really gorgeous.
Getting rid of bad stuff: I visualise all the crazy thoughts whirling in my brain as slot-cars on a super-duper track. Round and round! Aargh! Then I visualise walking out of the room that I imagine they’re in, then shutting the door, possibly locking it and maybe even hanging a ‘do not enter’ sign on it. Works every time.
Christmas fun: Weirdly, the most fun I had at Christmas was working in retail. I used to work in a jewellery shop, at Deka Queen Sreet (cringe), which was kind of a small department store (lingerie, chocolates, toiletries, toys, teatowels), and I also worked in the Body Shop St Lukes. Music! Decorations! Christmas shopping! Wishing people a merry Christmas hundreds of times a day! All good. Now, I like public decoration displays and lit-up houses and sunshine on tinsel (summer!). And Mariah.
I luv Xmas. I do hate the consumerism and all the stress it generates: if you could only see the state of the traffic in my city, everyone is crazy and the cars’ horns are ALWAYS sounding!! But besides of that, is great; I love the xmas dinner with all my family, cooking and decorating cookies, the tree, distracting the little kids so we can put the gifts below the tree (so the think that Santa put them there without them noticing!), and even the Xmas mass in my old school is great and I’m an atheist!!
Plus, this year I decided to make hand-made gifts, and my group of friends, instead of exchanging gifts, is organizing a xmas dinner too, where everyone has to take something baked by them! Isn’t that awesome?
the rose therapy seems really interesting, i must try that some time…
and for
If Christmas seems too pointless…
why not try I Won’t Be Home For Christmas by Blink-182.
That song is so funny, it may perhaps even put one in the Christmas spirit, even if the lyrics emphasize one’s disliking of the Christmas season.
To ease all Christmas worries…
BAKE A HELLBOAT OF COOKIES!
Or baguettes! Or biscotti (my personal fave)! Or Apples!
Baking instantly gets me into the spirit. I think about all the people I can give my [baked] goods to.
xoxo.
Again, iCiNG never ceases to amaze me. This article is perfect.
As it seems that 2007 has been a phenominially bad year for my whole family, I want to end it well with a proper Christmas.
Another thing to add to the Christmas fun, is that holiday baking adds the finishing touch to the seasonal fun. My favorite things to bake are peppermint-fudge cupcakes, chocolate covered pretzles, and forsty vanilla cupcakes with sticky marshmellow icing.
Enjoy the holiday season everyone!
While I am pumped for Christmas this year, I’ve been having a generally flat day today so I went out side and got some sunshine and picked a rose from the garden. It’s cheered me up already!
i’m really not feeling christmas this year (too busy trying to find a job…) and because we’re going away on christmas eve i’m not decorating the apartment… but i am planning on going to the welsh church choir service on sunday afternoon… and the carols in the domain rehearsal if i can get someone to swing a ticket my way… hopefully then by the time we arrive at my fiances parents place on christmas eve i’ll be ready for the christmas overload :)
i’m slowly warming to the christmas vibe, however i will never EVER enjoy mariah carey’s ‘all i want for christmas is you’, as a small child i was stuck in a shopping centre christmas shopping with my mother and that song was on repeat for the 45 minutes we were there.
i haven’t recovered fully yet :)
I LOVE Christmas! I always have and I think I always will! It doesn’t take alot to get me into the Christmas spirit, however, it is a little harder to excite my boyfriend (his parents never made a big deal out of Christmas). So to get him in the Christmas mood, I play Christmas carols (sung by a school choir of course), and get him to help me wrap presents, decorate the house, and dress up all of my stuffed toys in costumes made of Christmas paper. He finds it ridiculous but it makes him laugh, and isn’t that what Christmas is about? Being with the people you love, and making them laugh? That is what my Christmas is always about!
Ah! I’ve had ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ stuck in my head for like, three days!
I’m Jewish, but I absolutely LOVE getting into the Christmas vibe. Not the religious aspect, but the holiday music station is permanently on when either my mother or I is driving in the month of December (the soft rock station converts to Christmas music for the month) and I love the decorations, the lights, and so on.
And I especially love MY family’s Christmas traditions- a trip to a Chinese restaurant and the movie theater! It just isn’t Christmas for me without vegetable lo mein and extra buttery popcorn.
Watching Christmas Vacation and parts of the 24 hour run of A Christmas story has become a family tradition. They never fail to make me giggle. and I agree with Miss Elle-bake cookies!and have a cookie swap party! or x-mas bread, the kind that you braid. I love the way my hands smell after baking bread.
Just a quick note about poinsettias –
DON’T get them if you have cats.
THEY ARE POISONOUS TO CATS.
Other than that, all your ideas are lovely!
No Christmas mix is complete without The Elf’s Lament by the Barenaked Ladies. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qixiv080feg)
And I’m pretty sure the best Christmas event ever is the Festival of Trees we have here. Companies and organizations sponsor & decorate Christmas trees with different themes. It’s really cute, and definitely the highlight of the Christmas season for me. :)
I love the idea of physically doing something liberating to get over a bad period in your life. My mummy believes in wicca and she has this technique of putting everything that reminds her of a bad point in her life in a bags and “trapping the bad engery”. Although I don’t think like this I do like the point of physically throwing out all of the bad thing then rearranging my bed room and buying nice new linen and bedroom things (going to ikea makes me happy!). I do this espically when I’ve ended a bad relationship because of all of the intimate moments in this space.
Or try to focus on all of the things that you have learnt this year, even if the lessons were hard, now that you know them your much better off than when you first started. I like to think of things as a journey, on the way you get really tired and feel like giving up, but then you slog on to try and get there.
For me gathering all of my friends for a Christmas barbeque makes me defently lift my mood.
Sorry for the large comment. I too have had a tough year (I went to europe for a year, had a emotionally tourching relationship, accepting things about myself that will change me forever, come out of closests etc)
I recommend The League of Gentlemen’s Christmas Special to everyone. You’ll thank me later. Or you’ll hate me later…
I do need to lay down and get this stress out. I always get stressed around this time because of all the money going out and working less…sigh
Thanks for the tips. :) I think I should get a tree.
I love christmas – the smell of the christmas tree and all the twinkling lights make me so excited!!! I also advocate dancing like crazy to christmas music – it works for me!
Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you all have a great one :)
Reinvent Xmas!!!!!! Cook something from other country, or start a new Xmas tradition. Last year I was so sick about Christmas, I decided to start my new own tradition, so my granchildren can say “Oh Grandma Aurea used to cook this for Christmas” or something like that. So I experimented for a week before Xmas with food and I came up with “Xmas Sushi” it was great, everybody loved it!!!!
And then I decided the whole family should exchange gifts, but not in a conventional way, it was a “treasure hunt”, and the gifts were totally ridiculous, and anonimous, we still don´t know who bought the duck vibrator that my granny won at the end, hahaha.
Thanks for the article, Gala. This year I am truly going to enjoy Christmas. For twenty years I worked in stores. Nights, weekends, holidays. The Christmas season was always a big bummer. I was too tired, too stressed out etc to enjoy myself. Then early year I finally lucked out and got a job in a factory. It is sooo much better. I get a four day weekend this year!
Even though I am single and do not have many relatives or close friends, I plan to make the best of it! I have a two foot tree up on my entertainment center and am planning a big cookie making frenzy to gift to the friends and family I do have. I have dug out all my Christmas videos including Christmas Vacation and plan on spending a good part of next weekend watching them. I have also bookmarked a ton of You Tube videos and downloaded a lot of music for the Ipod.
This Christmas I feel the spirit for the first time in years. Kind of like Scrooge on Christmas morning.
Geeky Kay’s Christmas Spirit Solutions
(Disclaimer, I know my friends and I are geeky but it WORKS for us , so I embrace it, if you happen to have a little inner geek these ideas may help too).
Dress up and go to a Christmas Party, it doesn’t have to be fancy, spend time with your friends. Bring a Santa Hat, Reindeer Antlers or even a cheep Tiara. One of my 2007 highlights is definately getting ready for my friends work-christmas party. I got to be a date since one of my best friends is in a Long Distance Relationship and Needed a date, yeah! We spent hours doing our makeup, sculpting our hair, sharing accessories , being goofballs, laughing. It was fab!
**Make Crafts ** Beads, Wires, Pipecleaners, a Glue Gun GO! I’m a kid at heart, creating something pretty.
Donate money or your time or both, do what your budget allows, we went on a shopping trip to make donations to a regional charity that was looking for childrens cloths and gifts. We got to shop (who doesn’t love to do that!), and feel good about our purchases. Shopping for cute outfits for those that need them was a fab way to spend an afternoon. Volonteerwise, kids are adorable (although at times overwhelming!).
Sing, belt it out at the top of your lungs like a nerd, in the shower , home a lone are in the crowd, your fave christmas jingle.
Focus on the positives. As you think of the things that you are thankful for about this year, write them down in a journal so that you can go back to them when you need to. I’m the kind of person who has good days (positive) and negative days (where I can’t seem to grasp onto anything good). This year I had a REALLY good day where I was just like “Wow I am thankful for…. “ I e-mailed it to myself to refer to whenever I start to get negative. I’m reiterating it again, in another form at present.
All the things that I feel I have control over in some form or another, “In 2008 I am looking forward to”... was the entry I did in my journal last night. It will help me get through actual Christmas which will be very quiet because my friends and family will all be away (or busy with their own families if they are staying for christmas).
Of course there are still moments where its hard, we’re allowed to have humbug moments, in my case, another thing that you need to do is Cry. if you’r a cryer, trying to hold it in just drags things out. I like to Cry it out so I can move on, talk through it to the air. (If you have beliefs that allow it, talking ‘to’ someone, in my case my mom, she passed away many many years ago, but I chat/cry when things are going really bad, for me, that works and helps… and sometimes God, etc…If it doesn’t help you… ignore this last one. It just works for me, I talk it out, I cry it out, maybe take a nap and then wake up and tackle life again.
I hope you make it through the Christmas season.
All the best Kay
You should get a girlfriend around one evening, bust out some sherry (or some other christmas spirit – oooh! Pun!) and some yummy christmassy treats, and watch Ramstein music videos while you wrap gifts in flamboyant style – this year I’m wrapping them all in plain coloured paper then collaging crazy things onto them. Glitter! Feathers! Animals and pretty ladies! Flowers! Ribbon!
Gala you should write an article on gift wrapping! there are so many WONDERFUL things you can do and it makes gifts SO much more special.
Mmm, I was in the supermarket earlier this evening when ‘Santa Baby’ came on, and I couldn’t stop myself from singing along. :D I’m going to try that visualisation for any random negative things I have hanging around. Although I’m feeling 100% better than a couple of months ago, I bet it would be worthwhile to let go of ALL my remaining bits of baggage before Christmas and the new year.
I completely agree with what you said about going to a carol service. Although I’m uncertain about my religious beliefs, they have the power to move me deeply.
nice article!
beside listening to christmas music and going to christmas markets, making and wrapping gifts always puts me in the right mood.
an excellent post –
and i wanted to add…i’ve found that yahoo widgets have provided me with a great deal of christmas cheer!
You can download many christmas themed “widgets” which sit on your desktop. For instance i have a christmas tree, which i can decorate myself, and i also have something called a “snowmandancer” – he plays christmas songs when you click him, and creates an ongoing stream of white snowflakes falling down my screen! I find it very theraputic actually!
Anyway, just a christmassy suggestion!
Great post, again!
Nadine – I will have to try the visualisation you posted; it sounds as if it works pretty well! Gala, I did the rose/cord thing last night and again this morning, and really felt it working. I’m actually up, showered and dressed by 9am for the first time in ages! Really helped to imagine throwing away all my tired/uncomfortable/anxious feelings.
I know it’s a bit late, but I love the Griswolds. :) When my father and I got on much better (I was a lot younger) watching that at Christmas time was a tradition.