Your guide to banishing holiday grinchiness

by PAMELA POST

My dad used to call me his “Christmas Girl.”

When I was little, I loved Christmas so much that I would start pining for it by the time June or July rolled around. We would be driving through town in the family Ford Galaxie 500 in sweltering heat, watching kids jump through the lawn sprinklers outside their houses. I’d be sprawled in the back seat in a nest of Archie comics, belting out a medley of Charlie Brown, Nat King Cole, and Mel Tormé Christmas classics in between slurps on a blue Popsicle.

Somewhere in the intervening decades, all that changed. From the season that I used to anticipate with the greatest joy, Christmas became the season that more and more started to elicit in me a sense of crushing dread. Like Marley’s chains, I started—one link at a time—to gather a world-weary, adult sense of impending doom in the face of the “ho-ho” season and at the anticipation of obligation, expectation, demands, and physical, emotional, and commercial exhaustion. By the time mid-October hit and I spotted the first Christmas decorations going up in the big chain stores, my brow would furrow with cynicism. I bore my new bad-Christmas-attitude burden like an ox resigning itself to a yoke.

This year, I decided to be proactive and seek professional help for persistent grinchitis.

I’m sitting in the tranquil, aqua-and mocha-toned studio office of Jonni O’Connor, Ph.D. O’Connor is a Vancouver therapist and meditation teacher. I’ve come to her Granville Island studio hoping for a humbug-ectomy.

The bad news, she tells me, is that the ghosts of Christmases Past will always be there. “They’re not going to go away,” she says. “But you can do something with it. Christmas is going to be the good memories, the bad memories. But staying in the present moment is going to be your very best coping strategy. And you’ve got to get clear on what your heart tells you are your priorities during this time—not anybody else’s expectations. Stay true to yourself. Before you make a shopping list, make a list of your own values over the holidays.”

Not surprisingly, O’Connor sees a surge in clients during December and January. “Think about it,” she says. “Our routines are turned on their heads for over a month, for goodness’ sake! The poor body doesn’t know what’s going on. It knows ‘sun up, sun down, sleep.’ The body doesn’t care about the calendar, doesn’t know a Tuesday from a Saturday. And in December the days are shorter, and here we are cramming in visitors, parties, shopping, decorating, and a host of family issues.”

It’s not surprising, she says, that “the first thing that often goes is your own daily commitment to yourself. For some, it’s going to the gym or yoga class; for others it’s 20 minutes of meditation or just getting enough sleep. When that goes—you’re giving the message that your deepest, highest self doesn’t matter—it can all unravel from there.”

OK, got it, Dr. Jonni. Make a heart list: daily yoga and meditation. Instead of foie gras, tinsel and toys—“sleep, stillness, and simplicity.”

But what do I do with my teeth-clenching chagrin at the commercial come-ons that start in October?

“Before you walk into the big, grand stores or the malls,” says O’Connor, “set this intention: I’m not here to do or buy anything. I’m just here to enjoy the beautiful lights, decorations, and displays the way I enjoy walking through the lobby of a grand hotel or resort. Be delighted by all the beautiful displays, feel grateful that it’s there, and that somebody else created it all for your pleasure. Then leave.”

Whoa. Radical.

The knot in my stomach is starting to loosen a little as I listen to O’Connor’s infectious laugh, and her ability to open up my two-sizes-too-small grinchy Christmas heart.

I’m starting to feel—dare I say it?—empowered to deal with my ghosts of Christmas Past and Future. Dr. Jonni even suggested going out for Christmas dinner to a lovely hotel. I like that idea! Christmas doesn’t have to be some Norman Rockwell or Martha Stewart ideal…I can make it my own.

As I leave her studio clutching one of her meditation CDs in my hands, I can start to feel my Marley chain lighten, several links at a time.

And I’m reminded how, as a little girl, I used to love walking downtown, looking at the store windows and the lights, holding my dad’s hand while he whistled Silver Bells…It’s Christmastime in the city…Ring-a-ling…Hear them ring…Soon it will be Christmas Day…

And I’m thinking—instead of pumpkin pie this year—blue Popsicles.

Pamela Post is a CBC News reporter who bore a striking resemblance to Cindy Lou Who, who was no more than two, in her toddler years.

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