To me, anyway.

If you let my mother tell it, she’d say it stopped working for me when I had to start giving gifts. She’s never wrong and knows me better than I know myself, so I never tell her that the reason why I liberated myself from her idea of Christmas is because it didn’t instill me in a sense of value or gratitude for the holiday and all the things that come with it.

If I had to think of a specific moment that Christmas died for me, I’d be stuck for just one experience. I think it was gradual, one or several experiences every year at this time that eroded the excitement of the holiday until there was nothing left.

Like the year I was allowed to decorate a hallway and the bathroom by myself, only to come back later to find that my mother had rearranged everything because it didn’t look the way she wanted it to. I think I was nine.

Or the year I didn’t buy her anything and got lectured on the value of the “thought that counts”. I thought about it, I just didn’t buy her anything.

Or maybe it was the year she bought a really nice bedroom set and I ordered a really nice set of sheets from the Spiegel catalog to go with it, only to endure a rant for a full hour about why I thought it was OK to spend so that kind of money. It would be about two or more years before the sheets ever made it on the bed, as a prop for my godsister’s wedding pictures (she used our house to get dressed).

Oh, and then there’s the year I asked if there really was such a thing as Santa Claus, only to have my mother snap that did I really think some fat white man would be delivering toys to black children in a black neighborhood? Well, we did have a fireplace. Two, actually, but I didn’t say that aloud. I guess I should have known the deal the year she suggested we go with a slice of pound cake instead of cookies.

I’m sure I could go on, but these are the moments that stand out for me the most.

The Christmas of my childhood began the day after Thanksgiving with the annual ritual of putting up a big artificial tree. Boxes upon boxes upon boxes would come out of the cellar, each labeled for the floor they were meant for (three), and we’d spend the next month decorating. Yes, a month. And the decorations would stay up until March.  It’s interesting that this is all coming up for me now, but as I write this I realize that by releasing all of my physical STUFF, it makes sense that some deeply rooted emotional stuff would come up and be released as well.

I’m in the third week of throwing STUFF out and things seem to be moving, even though I feel like I’ve slowed down a bit. A number of good things have been happening, like making the time to reconnect with old colleagues and friends and make new ones. New ideas are streaming in, and I was even inspired to write my very first eBook.

Would you like to read it?

I’ll be following the eBook with a post in about a day or so where I’d love for you to add your opinion about what you read.  Click here to download the eBook for free. And stay tuned for the followup post.