Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, my family and I go to the same Christmas tree farm, drink the same apple cider, and pick out (basically) the same 9-foot pine tree. We drive home, eat leftovers, decorate the rest of the house, and when it gets dark outside, we decorate the tree. At the end of the day, we all lie underneath the tree and eat celery with peanut butter. Later in the season, we’ll watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, eat lasagna on Christmas Eve, and put wrapping paper over the doorways to my and my siblings’ bedrooms so we can’t “peek” before our parents wake up on Christmas morning. These are just a few of the many holiday traditions my family keeps this time of year.
As someone who struggles with change, Christmas has always been something I could rely on to stay the same. Whether I was dealing with switching schools, navigating friendships as a teenager, or trying to get a sense of who I wanted to be when I got older, I always knew that the holidays would stay the same — and they would be happy.
But with every passing year, it’s gotten harder and harder to fit the five of us under that tree (yes, I’m speaking figuratively — but also, my 16-year-old brother grew taller than us in what feels like the blink of an eye). It felt like our traditions became not just what we did, but what we had to do. If I had to go to cheerleading on the night we were supposed to decorate our tree, we would stay up until midnight to finish it. If my brother had basketball practice on the morning of Christmas Eve, I would still beg him to do our usual morning workout. If my cousins were sick on Christmas Day, we would gather at our grandparents’ house anyway.
It was like there was a checklist in my mind, and if we diverged, I would panic. Christmas had to be the same every year. If it wasn’t, it meant that the one thing that was dependable and consistent in life would no longer be so. It meant that I, and everyone in my life, was growing up, and there was nothing — not even Christmas — that would stop it.
It’s difficult to accept when our lives start to change. I’m in my third year of college, living in my own house two hours away from where I grew up. My sister is a freshman at a different university, and my brother is a junior in high school. The three of us haven’t lived under the same roof for a few years now, and we have different responsibilities and commitments from when we were younger. On top of that, the rest of our family and friends are growing along with us. It’s hard not to look back on previous years and miss how things used to be. People can’t make it to every gathering anymore, and we can’t do every tradition because we don’t have the time.
When Christmas started to feel more of a burden for me than fun, I finally realized that my mindset needed to shift. Change is a part of life, so it’s inevitable that the holidays will change, too. I came to understand that if we focus on fighting this change, we’ll miss out on what’s really important: spending the time we have with the ones that we love. Christmas traditions are fun, but it’s fun to make new ones, too. Things may be different, but does that have to be so bad?
As I move through the different phases in my life, I know I’ll encounter entirely new griefs and challenges. Instead of dwelling on this, I’m choosing to focus on the fact that there will also be new successes and opportunities that I couldn’t have had if I fought against this change.
And no matter how much my life changes, this much remains true: After everything I experience throughout the year, the holidays will still be there at the end — even if they look different from when I was in elementary school. I know I am changing, so I’m letting the way I celebrate change with me.