Crying at Christmas carols getting out of control

[stealthbanana]

ds will be 4 this week. I remember having this moment of...emotion...when I was heavily pregnant with him and at a carol service and they sang silent night and suddenly just being overcome by thinking about the gentleness and innocence of a newborn baby (I KNOW).

Since then I have found carols progressively more emotional, culminating in, to my horror, this year, where I find myself uncontrollably welling up at ANY carol in ANY context. My kids were watching mickey’s once upon a Christmas this morning and I cried. Michael Bublé came on the radio and I cried ffs. MICHAEL BUBLÉ!!

Have I developed some kind of weird problem? How do I fix this? It’s embarrassing and mawkish. I’ve got a reprieve this year as not doing any in person carol services but will have to wear sunglasses to next year’s at the rate I’m going.

Sistine Chapel - cried.
Sphinx of Giza - cried a lot!

I’ve got an even worse one: I cry at Chris De Burgh’s A Spaceman Came Travelling. Various reasons: Christmas in general, it’s a bit of a spooky, sad song and it reminds of a traumatic life event that happened to me at Christmas when I was young. Seems like at Christmas they play that bloody song everywhere!

@Laiste

Sistine Chapel - cried. Sphinx of Giza - cried a lot!

At the Sphinx I was too busy laughing at/with the salesmen shouting 'Lovely jubbly, cheap as chips!'. I wondered where they'd got the phrase from.

@Laiste I suggest you watch the secrets of the saqqara tomb on Netflix - you will blub like a baby at all the amazingness

@Laiste I’m the same with songs on the radio - I’ll
be fine and then suddenly the beauty of a song gets me and I can’t carry on.

We went to see Hamilton last year and I’ve listened to the songs so many times since then and obviously I cry at Dear Theodosia, Who Lives Who dies who tells your story, It’s Quiet Uptown (I mean I can’t even listen to that one really) etc but I also can hardly listen to The Battle of Yorktown because the cello is just so GOOD. Also cry at A Winters Ball because it’s so happy and yet I know what’s coming.

We had In the bleak midwinter at our wedding so that one does get me!
Maybe saturation is the answer? Have carols playing all the time and eventually you'll be hardened to it?

I'm the same OP. Try pushing your tongue to the roof of your mouth, that should help

I had a 6 day old baby too. I remember Away in a Manger coming on the radio as I was changing a nappy, and the line "no crib for a bed" was far more than my frazxled, exhausted hormones could take after a hell of a week and I sobbed for poor baby Jesus

I have now snotted and sobbed through every Christmas service since and Away in a Manger is still the one that resurrects those snotty, snivelly new baby memories. He's 10 this week. It's officially a lost cause

Other memories of that first Christmas include laughing as he peed on his own face and wondering if baby Jesus did that to the mirth of Mary, and sniggering with sympathy at the stuffed turkey after feeling similarly rummaged around with in recent days

My other embarassing sobbing point is y6 leavers in the last family assembly of the school year. It doesn't matter that I have no connection to them, it's just that general theme of moving on and I suspect some deeper baggage as that's the point in my life when my dad died suddenly.
At least I'll have an excuse when it's actually my children's turn!

Children singing can be a bit of a minefield anyway.

The sphinx thing was weird. We'd seen the pyramids and (i was amazed at how the locals we're running about in the searing heat in leather jackets!) they were just as astounding and fantastic and unforgettable as you imagine.

We moved on to see the Sphinx and as soon as i saw it from the coach i started to fill up! Once out of the coach i spent the whole tour crying behind my scarf (which i pulled up pretending i had dust trouble). I loved it - maybe it was the powerful feeling of 'femaleness' i got from it after the 'maleness' and straight lines of the pyramids. I don't know But i was to let anyone see me, and fine once we pulled away

[quote stealthbanana]@BigusBumus we brought DS home from hospital on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. We live next door to a church and at 11pm on Christmas Eve we were awake feeding DS and we heard the organ start up for Midnight carol service. We thought, well we’re up, why don’t we go? So we bundled up DS and went to the service - sitting there in the dark listening to the carols with our angelic little bundle was just overwhelming. And I think when we went to take communion and have DS blessed by the priest most of the congregation lost their marbles too - I didn’t realise how uncommon it was to see 6 day old babies out and about, especially on Christmas Eve in a church! Plus his workaday John Lewis all white onesie looked positively and unintentionally beatific [/quote]
DS1 was about three and a half weeks old his first Christmas. Popped along to the crib service on Christmas Eve, the vicar (also his Nana) took him to the front of church on the altar to "introduce him" as it were. And then it was time for away in a manger. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house

I'm like this with a lot of Disney music. Nearly fell to my knees when Elsa and her mother were singing 'Show Yourself' together in Frozen 2.

You’re not alone OP. I cried yesterday listening to Tim Minchin’s Christmas song ‘White Wine in the Sun’. It makes me cry every year, but is much worse this year as it’s all about seeing your family at Christmas, which I won’t be doing.

Oh God, yes to carols, yes to Away in a Manger and yes to fucking Show Yourself, which I saw at an autism showing, in the company of 15 children who all looked at me like this as I snotted everywhere

I'm actually well hard and rarely cry/keep my cool when shit happens. But then it all comes out at the stupid moments

A school class were singing let it go from frozen in Sainsbury's last Christmas and I had to scuttle out the shop whilst welling up lest I start sobbing everywhere

"But a brass band at a distance and I am all tears and snotters."

Thank God this is not just me. I was in Westminster just before lockdown when the Guards band processed past in full uniform playing, and I absolutely lost it. Also unreliable with carols/small children.

I have no children of my own and hardly ever cry for any other reason.

Was in NCT with a super-bright, super-logical, insanely efficient, always on it, highly successful, faintly terrifying, superwoman lawyer.

After her son's first nativity at primary I found her sobbing helplessly in the corridor :)

Oh. I'm so glad it's not just me then! And it's the same as you, since having kids (oldest is 7). How bizarre!

Amazing Grace, anyone? 😢

God yes. Christmas singing is a sob fest in general.

Not heard the tim minchin song but just read the lyrics and I'm crying.

Judy Garland singing have yourself a merry little Christmas....
😪😪😪😪

I have been having a very tough time of it recently so everything makes me cry but particularly Christmas carols. Also my local radio station is getting Santa (I'm Irish) ringing kids. He rang a little boy in one of our main Children's Hospital the other day. I spent my lunchbreak crying in the loom

@Skipsurvey

children singing Away in a Manger can have that affect on me,

I raise you infant school children BSL signing to Away in a Manger. Dear god, that broke me at the school concerts. (They've also signed to A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman and Never Forget by Take That; they're not quite as emotional. Almost!)

It’s definitely becoming a parent that does it. I never used to cry at anything and now I’ve been known to get teary at adverts (John Lewis!). Also films (Arthur Christmas this weekend) and books - I can’t read ten little fingers and ten little toes to my little boy without my voice cracking. And when my little girl was born we were given ‘on the night you were born’. Had to make my husband read that as I was full on snotty sobbing.

Try putting your tounge to the roof of your mouth when you feel yourself starting to cry.

I've found my people! I'm a carol-cryer, and so was my DM. It's the twinkly lights, candles, children, nostalgia... I even got a bit sobby putting up the Christmas tree with DD (23) this year!

I really get it. Used to be fine until DM died three years ago and since then have been rubbish, she loved Christmas!
I don't know if it's just that though, sobbed bitterly through Belinda Carlisle 'Summer Rain' earlier and that was last romantic for me about 20 years ago! Might just be nostalgia for a time when life seemed a little less complicated!