Let’s face it — the second the date changes to November 1, there’s no hiding from Christmas. She’s everywhere. From lights and ornaments to your roommate singing their rendition of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” in the shower, you just can’t escape the holiday season unscathed. Not that it’s a bad thing. I can’t say I’m not a fan of driving around rich neighborhoods and looking at their grandiose decorations or belting out a few classics with my friends, but for me, Christmas has always been this weird gray area of my life.
Christmas isn’t a holiday my family would normally celebrate. My parents aren’t religious in the first place, but with my dad being Muslim and my mom being Buddhist, Christmas has no religious significance to us anyways. That being said, raising two children in the United States made my immigrant parents feel differently.
They worried that my brother and I would be left out at school for not celebrating and were starting to feel the pressures of American culture creeping up on them. All the neighbors on my street would decorate the outside of their houses and my parents felt like they had to too.
So, my parents went all in. They decided to indulge in American culture — they bought us presents, decorated the outside of our home with lights, and let us decorate a plastic tree in our living room. My mom even let my brother leave carrots outside as “reindeer food.”
We did this until I was in third grade and my brother was in middle school. The novelty had worn off and we were old enough to know that there was no reason to feel disappointed when other people were getting presents and we weren’t. Obviously Christmas isn’t just about the presents and the decorating, but that’s what it was for me.
Ever since then, Christmas has simply been a month full of awkwardly explaining that I don’t have a Christmas wish list nor any holiday decorations, because I don’t celebrate it. For a while, I wondered if I could even consider my childhood as “celebrating” Christmas. The holiday and culture are so overbearing that it got to the point where my parents felt like they couldn’t do anything besides celebrate it like everyone else.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the holiday season. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being excited for Christmas, but don’t naturally expect everyone around you to be celebrating as well. Don’t automatically wish people a “Merry Christmas” or ask them whether they’ve gone Christmas shopping yet. It’s not anyone’s job to make me feel included or content during this time of year, but it’s important to be more mindful of those that don’t celebrate Christmas.
Although the reason behind our Christmas was far from something to celebrate, I’ve come to learn a lot from it — one thing being that I’m eternally grateful to my parents. They went out of their way to make my brother and I feel included in a culture that’s so different from their own. Sure, we only celebrated for a short time, but my parents worked hard to make it great.