Christmas Cheer, Or Tear?
Christmas immediately brings to mind the hustle and bustle of putting up decorations and lights around the house and spending that one night with hot chocolate and cookies while you trim the tree. The excitement of buying and wrapping presents. Getting the house full of the traditional candy’s and treats. Buying the biggest, fattest stuffed turkey you can find. Ensuring that everyone’s favourite foods are in the house to be ready to prepare for the big feast on Christmas day. All of which brings many of us Christmas cheer.
Most of us cannot fathom that Christmas might be a time of fear, anxiety, and depression.
However, there will be some that:
- The Husbands decides he wants to leave and spend Christmas with a different family.
- That wonder if they will have enough to eat.
- That will become vulnerable and might head back to sex work as they will not have the support system in place due to front line people taking well deserved holidays.
- That will be sneaking out after everyone is in bed to go take care of a ‘client’. (click on this link to read a poem on this)
- That will have some sweaty guy who does not have a life all over them instead of being at home with their parents.
- That have lost their parents, spouses/partners and possibly some children and will have no one to come for traditional Christmas feast.
- That will have beautiful presents under the tree but will have a mom cringing in the corner with fear until her husband leaves.
- That the Dad decided in a drunken stupor that molesting his child was his Christmas gift from that child.
- That will be yelled at and possibly abused because their mom was just sexually attacked by her husband and is taking it out on the kids.
- That will be the brunt of some brute who is using her body to get out his frustration out on her because his wife ‘will not satisfy his needs’.
- The dad comes home and announces that he lost his job, and there is no money for presents.
Christmas can be so hard for so many different reasons.
Although your Christmas might be full of cheer, there are many who will have a lot of tears. This time of year more than ever, it is the time of great excitement or great fears.
Take the time to:
- Pay it forward when going through a coffee shop. Just buying someone else lunch might make a world of different for them this whole Christmas season.
- Offer to pay for someone’s groceries if you see they might need that extra help
- Drop by some gifts to families you know have had a rough year and might not have many, if any under the tree.
- Speak words of kindness to those that seem sad or depressed. People who have come from abuse need to know that someone noticed them. How easy is it to tell someone they look nice today, or compliment them on something you saw them do or accomplished?
- Look someone in the eye and smile. You never know what kind of day they are having, or if they are dreading the Christmas season.
- Christmas is one of the hardest time to be lonely so invite someone who is all alone to join you in your Christmas celebrations..
- Give money and or your time to charities that take care of homeless or families in need.
- Give someone a hug that looks anxious or is afraid.
- Offer to give a girl some money so she does not have to go to ‘work’ Christmas eve in order to buy food for her Christmas dinner
It takes so little to help others.
We need to count our blessings, and realize that many, many people are not going to have a Christmas full of Cheer, but in fact will have a hard, lonely, depressing Christmas, and will probably shed some tears.
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