Note to self from the ghost of Christmases past

Or why the holidays don't have to suck

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

I wasn’t going to do it. I told myself I wasn’t going to write a post about “surviving” the holidays. Yet here I am typing because here’s the thing. Even though I’m not a child psychologist or “expert” in any true sense of the word, I have 16 years of holidays with an autistic kiddo under my belt, the majority of those years as an undiagnosed mom. Suffice to say, I’ve learned things.

Before I impart some of those hard-won nuggets with you, allow me to back up a sec. When I lived in England, I pined for Christmases in Canada. There is something truly magical about celebrating in the land of frost and snow. Most years I was lucky enough to fly home for the holidays.

We aren’t religious in any sense, yet my family always made a production of Jesus’s big day. On Christmas Eve, we gathered for a huge turkey feast. (My late nan’s stuffing is legendary—years after her death the remaining kids still try, and largely fail, to emulate the recipe.) We carried on, laughing. Of course, there were presents. Enough to go around, but mostly it was the merriment. The associated feeling I had that lingered and gave me warm fuzzies from childhood through to adulthood.

When Carson was born and we moved back to Canada, I had every intention of carrying the torch and replicating that sense of wonder and magic. Yes, I had romanticized Christmas and willingly bathed in its nostalgic glow. Which made it all the more difficult when my child was a toddler.

We would gather at my uncle’s as per tradition, and I made sure to have Carson dolled up in fancy clothes (also as per tradition). Carson would take the first sitting and gobble up his turkey and cranberries—then his favourite meal. But by the time desert rolled around (pumpkin pie, of course), he was predictably overwhelmed. He started to cry and whine and scream.

One memorable year, I carried both him and his slice of pie into my uncle’s bedroom, closed the door, and ate pie together while watching the Grinch on a small TV. This sounds blissful to me now, but at the time I was heartbroken. Devastated, in fact. I wanted nothing more than to be out there with my cousins, aunts and uncles, not holed away in a bedroom.

I had visions of what Christmas must look like. How it had always looked like, and therefore must always look like... My own autistic rigidity in full force.

Year after year, the pattern would emerge. Carson would maybe make it through a few bites of dinner. Maybe he’d even open a couple presents we were lucky. Then he was done, primed for a meltdown if we pushed it.

Usually my stepdad, Mitch, offered to take Carson back to their house, for some quiet time, bath and bed. So we could stay and enjoy the “reindeer games.” Mitch wasn’t really a fan, and still claims he was happy to step in and take over. The first few years I cried. I wanted so badly for Carson to enjoy Christmas the way I had as a child (conveniently forgetting the fact that I spent a good part of most Christmas Eves past overwhelmed and shut up in bed). I held so tightly to all the rituals I had built up in my mind that I never stopped for a second to think about what he wanted, and what a nice Christmas might look like for him.

In retrospect, I feel horrible for putting him in that situation and insisting that he partake in or share my enthusiasm for every facet of the festivities. Classic theory of mind fail!

It wasn’t the end of the world if he didn’t eat a single bite of turkey dinner. Ditto if he didn’t dress up in scratchy clothes, play a raucous family game, tear open a single present, hug the uncle with a picky moustache or the aunt doused in perfume. And if he chose to sit in my uncle’s quiet bedroom with the iPad after eating something, and go home soon after, so be it. Christmas is about the children, but you wouldn’t have known it the way I acted.

My own ghost of Christmases Past has shown me the folly of my ways, so I won’t repeat it. In any case, I have a 16-year-old now, and will be pleasantly surprised if they show any interest whatsoever in my Christmas rituals, like baking or tree decorating. I still find Christmas magical. That will never change, but that’s on me. I have stopped expecting the holidays to look a certain way or for other people to act a certain way.

And you know what? It’s a relief. Now I am free to live in the moment and take it as it comes. Being in the present may turn out to be the best present there is.

---

Have you learned to let go of expectations around the holidays? How did that go?

---