Summary

The author expresses their holiday stress, particularly with the commercial aspects of Christmas, and finds relief in writing and sharing personal stories on Medium.

Abstract

The author of the article titled "A Christmas Confession" reveals their personal struggles with the holiday season, which include the stress of gift buying, the pressure of putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, and the monotony of formulaic Christmas movies. As a self-described non-shopping type, the author admits to disliking the commercial aspects of the holidays and yearns for simpler pleasures like a cup of coffee and a good book. The article also touches on the author's family dynamics, such as engaging their teenage son in family activities and discussions about movie characters' purity of heart. The author finds some catharsis in watching a Christmas movie with a clear antagonist and expresses gratitude for the opportunity to share their feelings with the Medium community. They also reflect on positive experiences, like reading and writing stories that uplift the spirit, and invite readers to join Medium for unlimited access to content, offering their referral link for sign-up.

Opinions

The author finds the holiday season to be inherently stressful, especially as a parent.
They do not enjoy shopping, whether in stores or online, and would prefer less commercial gifts.
Putting up the Christmas tree before Thanksgiving feels inappropriate and like a chore.
The author is critical of the predictable and formulaic plots of many Christmas movies.
They appreciate the importance of having an antagonist in movies to create tension and interest.
The author values family time, including watching movies and having discussions about them.
Writing on Medium serves as a therapeutic outlet for the author's holiday frustrations.
The author encourages readers to engage with the Medium community and offers a referral link for membership.

A Christmas Confession

Don’t any one but the holidays are stressful for me

I find the holiday season to be stressful, don’t you?

I want to enjoy working together to decorate the tree, taking a walk at the beach on the weekend with my wife and son, watching Christmas movies together as a family with a batch of brownies, and the build-up to the Big Day.

But Christmas comes with a lot of stress every year, doesn’t it?

Especially if you’re a parent.

There is the gift buying, and as a non-shopping kind of guy, I am not one who enjoys going into stores and I’m still getting used to online shopping.

I am the guy who just likes a cup of coffee and a good book for Christmas. And time to read. Not socks, underwear, and other presents I could buy for myself.

I don’t like putting up the Christmas tree before Thanksgiving. It feels like it doesn’t give Thanksgiving the proper focus it deserves and I am not in the Christmas spirit in November, so putting up the tree feels like a … chore.

Phew! Now I feel a lot better getting that confession off my chest.

Christmas Movies

I do like watching Christmas movies together as a family when our 13-year-old son chooses to come out of his room, but the ones we watched last week (the Christmas romances) were kind of lame with the same formulaic plots.

The last two we watched had identical plots — two people formerly in a relationship were getting back together — during the holiday season and I went along for the ride, even though the plot telegraphed where it was going.

In the third Christmas movie we watched, I realized all the protagonists were musicians and their plot involved them reigniting their creative impulses.

That part I could relate to and I thought of Thank You Notes prompt last week.

Try this for conversation at the dinner table

For fun, I asked my wife and son one night at dinner to rank the characters from the purest heart (gold, silver, bronze) in YouTube-style to neutral to the character with the least pure heart in the movie we saw the night before.

And that’s when we all realized the last two movies didn’t have antagonists.

See why I’m feeling grumpy during this holiday season? A movie must have an antagonist to create tension in the main character’s pursuit of their destiny.

I don’t want to be grumpy. I think I need a project (aka this week’s Thank You Notes writing prompt) that my son and I or my family can work on together.

Finally, an antagonist!

Thankfully, the movie we watched last night on the Lifetime channel had a crotchety Christian woman who took out her grief from the death of her brother (the church pastor) on the new female pastor who replaced him.

I felt better now that there was an antagonist for the protagonist to overcome.

Thank you for listening

Thank you for allowing me to share my holiday confession with you. As Christmas looms around the corner, we all experience many emotions and I feel better letting out my emotions and I hope it helps you in some way too.

Now on to finding/remembering a time I had fun working on a project with someone … I hope to share that with the Thank You Notes community.

And I promise to be in a more positive and uplifting mood.

Here’s a story I read by Lu Skerdooan that brought a smile to my heart and one of my own I wrote last week about the teacher who lit my fire to be a writer.

I love writing on Medium.

If you are not a Medium member yet and would like to receive unlimited access to all Medium content, you can sign up here. It’s just $5 a month. I will receive a small referral bonus, at no additional cost to you, when you sign up using my link.