It’s that time of year again, one we are all too familiar with. It’s the time of year where rainstorms turn into blizzards and days at the beach fade into days cozied up at home. The faint smell of peppermint and pine fills the air and our favorite Christmas songs ring out. Each year it’s the same, but as time goes on, many have noticed a foreign feeling that grows stronger with each passing. The feeling of Christmas becoming a little less… magical.
When we were kids, we waited all year for Christmas to come. It felt like nothing else was as important as helping your parents decorate the house or circling the gifts you wanted from a magazine. Getting up in the morning was even exciting because it meant you got to find whatever your elf on the shelf had hidden over the night. The illusion of Christmas magic was still very real.
Some argue that with age the cheerful feeling of Christmas dissipates because we realize Santa is not real and there aren’t actually elves making our toys. But it feels like it’s more than that. Instead of Christmas being the most magical time of year, it quickly became the most stressful and exhausting time of the year.
Baking Christmas cookies grew into a matter of finding the time to do it, and decorating the house turned into a chore. Even the best part of Christmas, gift-giving, became the most stressful part of the holiday. Trying to figure out how many people to buy gifts for or what to get them, for many, has taken all the joy out of the cherished tradition. It seems like no matter the Christmas activity, it’s not as magical as it once was.
This feeling actually has a name; it’s called growing up. Krystine Batcho, a psychology professor at Le Moyne College said, “Based on our childhood experiences, Christmas has acquired unrealistic expectations of mythical ideas.” To put it in simpler terms, because as children when we believed in mythical stories like Santa Clause, it allowed us to escape from our own non-magical reality.
“As adults, we know we can never again enjoy those wondrous feelings and beliefs… It isn’t surprising, then, that many people are disappointed when they don’t experience the fulfillment of the promise of Christmas,” said Batcho.
She notes that a common way people try to get that Christmas feeling back is to do those typical Christmas activities like the ones previously mentioned, but no matter how hard we try it never feels quite the same.
The dissipation of the holiday spirit is also because with age, we gain more responsibilities. This means that instead of being able to put the majority of our focus on Christmas, like we once did as kids, we have bigger and more important things to worry about. Instead of building snowmen after school with our friends, we now have to go to work. Instead of watching Christmas movies, we have to write the English paper that’s due tomorrow. It boils down to not having enough time to do it all and in the end, getting in “the Christmas spirit” becomes last on our to-do list.
As sad as it is to come to this realization, life goes on, and so does Christmas. Maybe this year it can be different though. Instead of picking up that extra shift, make plans with friends to go sledding or make gingerbread houses. Rather than wasting hours on your phone, go and look at Christmas lights around town. Christmas can be as magical as you choose to make it, so try not to let that magic fade completely.
