So, I don't really watch football but we usually watch the superbowl and have a little family party. It always used to seem like a big event. But this year it just didnt. The same thing with the past few holidays. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. The days just never seemed special, kind of like just regular days. I don't know why, could be the home situation, kids getting older, or maybe just my perception.
Some of it IS the lids getting older. We always did a huge spread of appetizers for the Super Bowl and watched the game and particularly the commercials. (Football and sports aren't my thing so I usually are and waited for the commercials! ) This year the kids were upstairs doing homework and I stayed home rather than spend the night with my boyfriend due to a bad snowstorm. The result was a dull evening watching a game I had no interest in, with someone I didn't want to be with. Thank God for texting. Things don't seem as special, I suspect, because we have already begun moving past our old lives. Even things that we enjoy take on a different cast because we don't feel the same sense of belonging, and we know we belong somewhere else. Even if we don't know where that someplace is yet.
With the loss of my mother, Thanksgiving and Christmas just kinda fell apart for my family. We are all older and have just drifted off to our own little circles. It really does take a strong personality to keep traditions alive.
May be I'm getting old or the kids has their own interests or because I'm deeply unhappy, but I lost my enthusiasm for holidays and events for years now.
Hi, Could be that the illusion of holidays have lost their mystique? We played out closeted roles for years and the closet is gone. The holiday act is gone too. If you were with a bunch of gay guys you loved, able to be yourself, I suspect the magic would return. Just a WAG.
I've spent the majority of my adult life existing for my family, and for my kids specifically. Holidays were huge because I had a purpose; making others happy and fulfilled. The kids are grown and almost out of the house and I'm left with not knowing how to do those things for ME.
This is very interesting, I also had many years of Jewish holidays to celebrate, and my table has seen some major big events over the years, but because I am living alone, and Jewish holidays no longer have the force of obligation they once held over me, my enthusiasm for them is considerably diminished. Nevertheless, doesn't this say a lot about how badly our traditions have degenerated into "an event for the kids" rather than for grown adults, or for the whole family together? Part of the problem of not being able to delve more deeply into important ideas, whether they be philosophical or religious, is that we live mostly on the surface of ourselves, so naturally, we are incapable of appreciating the more subtle and deeper meanings that once suffused religious holidays; we simply cannot appreciate these things from the level of superficialities. We have to a large extent become separated from our inner, deeper impulses and needs, such as those corresponding to finding meaning in our lives (as I get older, this becomes a more and more urgent question: what was it all about?), a role that religion once played. I am not advocating for religion here, only that without the struggle to find meaning, whatever that may be, our celebrations are mere entertainment. This quote from W. B. Yeats is pertinent:
Amen to this. Even more so than my kids, the holidays were dominated by my wife and her family. Thanksgiving has always been the major even on my side of the family, and and next year it should be very unusual and special, because it will be very much the unveiling of my new relationship to my clan. My daughters will be out of the picture on a school trip across the country, so it will be just me and my boyfriend and about 50 members of my mother's family. (Poor guy--they're nice people but the sheer numbers are overwhelming!) The other holidays, outside of a Christmas Eve Chinese dinner with my brother and his family, were her family or her decision, with me going along to avoid the conflict that inevitably arose whenever I tried to suggest anything. It may take a year or two to settle into new traditions, and there will be a few holidays that will be strained and awkward at first, as they were after my mom died unexpectedly 29 years ago. But I'm excited at the opportunity to build new holiday traditions with input from both of us. Seeing him in the congregation when I sang for Midnight Mass this year was a thrill, and it will be even better when it's preceded by the dinner with my family, and followed by going home together.
I like what Greatwhale had to say. My kids are also grown and the holidays had lost any meaning at home. But this year I looked at Christmas a completely different way, with a renewed purpose and meaning for my life and it was fantastic. I was still in the Christmas spirit going into the new year.
Question... Yes kids grow, but have you pondered you keep growing too? It is easy to point at kids and say "grown" but more difficult, more subtle to finger your own growth.
The holidays have become a great source of sadness for me. I have no family aside from kids around. We mostly celebrated with my wife's family. I have been invited to some holidays with her family, with whom I am on good terms. However, it's not the same for me. We used to make the holidays often and I love to cook and entertain. That's not in my life now for many reasons. Being alone on a Jewish holiday for me is a bad experience. Although I'm not religious, the holidays mean a great deal to me and I am used to having many people around. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. They don't mean less to me at all; in a way, they mean more.
Because ultimately, they are only days of the year like any other. When we're children we are taught they are special. But as we get older we no longer feel so enthusiastic.
Pete1970 : You, my friend are so right, the holidays don't seem " special " anymore. I think its because we associate the holidays with being young, or for little kids. You brought up watching the Superbowl, after watching football with my brother while growing up, I'm all football-ed out. Now, I only watch the Superbowl, to see the " new " commercials, the " big deal " halftime show ", and the last fifteen minutes of the game,. Whatever happened to the good old family get together's, where we could just TALK to each other. I guess that idea died as we grew up. Jaymegurl
I don't ever remember anytime I got up early for Cmas or anything. Aside from Halloween (which really is not a holiday), I couldn't care less about any of that stuff. I like the decorations and stuff, but not the holiday itself. I've always known they were phony, company profit driven, marketing scams. I do like aspects of some of them.......like around November, for Thanksgiving, all the Pumpkin flavored coffees, candy and stuff come out. I love Pumpkin flavored anything! Other than that, I couldn't care less. I kept up with it for a while, cause of my granny. But when she passed away, there was no more use in keeping up pretense. I think for people who do like holidays, they lose interest when they get older, because they see how phony and fake it all is, how much work and money go into it that is a complete waste, and how nobody really appreciates what you do...its ALL phony bullshit.