Does anyone else get sad at Christmas for no reason at all?

[tinkersfig]

I think it’s the music. I have a great Christmas really, loads of fun on the day and a fairly big family but on the run up to it, I feel a bit teary!

I’ve put my tree up today and had the music on and I’m sat here feeling a bit blue.

Yes every year. My birthday is a few days after Christmas and I hate the reminder that my birthday is looming - it’s such a rubbish day too as it’s so near to Christmas. For this reason I’ve never really felt the enjoyment of the Christmas build up that everyone else feels. I also hate the stress of buying presents for certain family members just for the sake of it - presents that no one needs and with money I could do without spending.

I adore Christmas, but when I'm in bed on Christmas eve I get incredibly sad and can't sleep due to the worry that some children will wake to nothing. Not sure kids who's parents love them but just can't afford, but for the kids with terrible parents. My heart just can't cope.

I was just thinking yesterday that my Christmas weepiness has arrived, but I know why mine happens and I just go with it now.

I was widowed 6 years ago, my wife (same-sex marriage) and I knew it was coming, and her final Christmas was difficult in places. I remember being at a silent disco in Edinburgh and ‘All I want for Christmas is you’ was playing - I turned to her and she had tears pouring down her face, I can never hear that song without remembering that …

Plus, I have family, lots of them, but I am a MIL to DILs who are very close to their own mothers and as we know from MN MIL threads whatever we do can be overscrutinised and often WRONG, so I do tend to walk a bit on eggshells there.

So Christmas is a bittersweet time. It will be lovely, not exactly how I would like it to be, but I don’t imagine anyone gets that anyway.

Same for me.

My parents were alcoholics and Christmas was a day that they didn't even have to try to hide the fact!

Though since having DC, I actually now do enjoy most of December and the build-up. Christmas Day is still a bit touch and go. I obviously enjoy seeing my DC's reaction but my eldest is ND so it can sometimes all be a bit overwhelming, which adds another dimension.

Yes, I find myself tearful for no obvious reason at Christmastime. I have young children and a happy home but we’ve lost 3 grandparents in the last 2 years and my lovely mum has dementia. I think it’s the passage of time and the realisation, since becoming a mum, that my own childhood was often less than ideal.

I like Christmas but it's always touched with melancholy.

My lovely Mum died when my siblings and I were teens so for decades there has been an empty seat at the festive table.

Bing and Bowie singing The Little Drummer Boy does it for me.

'Christmas always makes me cry' by Kacey Musgrave covers a lot of it for me.

I think it's nostalgia for the past, your own childhood, people you have lost, your own children becoming adults and not little anymore. The music evokes such strong memories and emotions in me. I love it but it's slightly painful too.

While my Mother and her DH were alive I did because Christmas was very triggering. Once they were gone I felt like I had been unshackled, almost like being let out of prison. Now I am free to enjoy Christmas with my lovely family.

My sons and their families are coming to me on Christmas Eve and I will see my daughter and her family the day after Boxing Day. We have never put any pressure on each other about Christmas. Now I don’t have the Death Eaters lurking, I can really relax and enjoy it.

Yes, very much so.

And for me the music is also a big trigger! So I am glad it’s not just me. It’s very much a feeling of nostalgia, but also feelings of sadness that my life does not match up to the “perfect family Christmas” image that we are all presented with. It was particularly bad for me when my dd was younger (I am a lone parent).

I try to distract myself and avoid Christmas carols etc!

Yes, in the run up I do. I find the cold, dark and wet weather hard and it triggers my health anxiety for some reason. I've stopped going to xmas markets and the like for reasons I cant explain (hoping I'll come back to all that). I also dread January for the same reason. On the day itself I'm afraid I use a few glasses of prosecco to chivvy myself on.

I find Xmas sad and the pressure to be jolly and do fun things just makes it worse for me, I find the music makes me cry, I’m 55 now and my mums gone, the kids are grown up, I’m single and struggling to afford Xmas and I just wonder what the point of it all is. I do try to get in the Xmas mood for everyone around me but inside I just feel so melancholy

I get really unbelievably sad that George Michael died on Christmas Day at such a young age. And I cry. Every year. It's an embarrassing tradition. What the fuck is wrong with me? I'd blame menopause but I started it when I was 40! It must be the wine 🙄, except I haven't had any now and I'm welling up a bit 😂

I’m glad it’s not just me who feels the melancholy. I’ve started to feel a bit anxious too. I hate the change in my house, even though I like the lights on the tree etc. Very odd.

It's nostalgia for me, remembering when the people at the Xmas dinner table were all older than me. I've now seen 5 generations and the older I get, more memories have been made than are still to pass.

The passing of time and the mortality of your family and loved ones is never greater than at the Xmas dinner table.

Me. I always cry on Christmas Day. I don’t know why, it’s not happiness or sadness, it’s just overwhelming I suppose. The music always leans on the sad side too.

Just listened to when a child is born by Johnny Mathis and was in floods of tears 😭

A space man came travelling by Chris De Burg 😭😭😭

Yes as it brings home the fact that my Family is dwindling which is sad

@Benjithedog it had me bawling the other day....my mum always listened to it when I was a little girl. Very very nostalgic song ❤️

Not sure if anyone has already mentioned it but the Welsh word Hiraeth sums this up very well.

• a deep, nostalgic longing or homesickness for a home, place, person, or time that you can't return to, or perhaps never even existed, blending joy, grief, and a sense of loss for something irretrievably gone, like a lost culture, a childhood, or an idealized past.

i always get this now and again at Christmas time.

For me it's nostalgia. I work in a school, all the Christmas songs, the nativity, children singing, the outfits all make me teary. Actually anyone singing carols.

It's a bittersweet time of year, remembering lovely Christmases past as a child, as a teen when more of my family were still with us, and as a mother to small excited DC.
But it's also the realisation that future Christmases will be different, smaller with probably a lot less faces around the table.

However, my parents also went through the same and they might have felt similar, but I remember those Christmases fondly. So I'm staying cheerful for my (fairly grumpy) teens.

Yes, sometimes. If you think about the fact that Christmas brings up just about any sad memories from your upbringing + any current sadness + pressure to spend + money worries + pressure to be happy + spending days with relatives + unhealthy food + booze + bad weather, it's a wonder anyone comes out sane!!

I'm getting better with it - I plan some nice food and ignore anything else I don't want to do. In the past I wished we could just think of it as a festival for children - I think there'd be less pressure on the adults that way.

Yes, it’s the nostalgia, memories, stress and (this is me being a bit dramatic and riddled with health anxiety) the what if it’s my last one or I don’t have many left etc. For context, my step-mum did die very suddenly recently but I’ve always had that Christmas worry/sadness really.

Don’t even start me on ‘silent night’ or ‘have yourself a merry little Christmas’ 😢😢😢

I've found my people.
As a child Christmas was always a time of family fighting. Now as an adult our family has fractured beyond repair and I'm always left trying to get the remaining people together and there's inevitably arguing when certain people are mentioned. I miss the family relationships from the few happy memories I have.
Now with a husband and children I try to make it as magical as I can but I often have a little cry on Christmas. I also have a December birthday and feel a lot of sadness too. It gets worse as I get older but I find my friends don't really understand my December sadness.
Sorry others feel the same.