ambivalent thoughts on christmas

i don’t know what it is about christmas that can lift up and plunge my spirits at the same time. when i was a lot longer (and therefore a lot less complicated and far easier to please), it was just a simple matter of marking the date in the calendar and looking forward to the festivities, gifts, christmas shopping, and delightful surprises. in fact, the anticipation alone was enough to propel my youthful imagination to stratospheric heights.

this gradual tilt towards ambivalence (regarding christmas) started when i got into college, i think (yeah, i guess i was a regular stick-in-the-mud even then weheheh), and occasionally inched owards negative territory when i actually started working, particularly when i began living on my own. this is not to say that all my christmasses since then have all been gloomy ones. like most people, i had my ups and downs, and there were a couple of years at least that have been really happy ones.

lately though, i just seem to be wallowing down in the dumps whenever the yuletide season comes. for some reason, after attending various gatherings and all the gifts had been unwrapped, exclaimed over, and duly appreciated, i find myself vaguely ‘unsatisfied’ — like i’ve overlooked something, despite the material and intangible things i’ve gained. the maddening thing is that i can’t even put my finger on it.

perhaps it’s because christmas occurs at the end of the year — just around the time when some of us (un)consciously tally our ’score’ for the year, and more often than not, find the net figure well below our expectations. or it could be just my habitual gloomy musing whenever another year comes up (2009!).

oh well. here’s hoping i can shake off this dismal mood before christmas comes around.