Unfortunately, I am also finding that Christmas can be a serious cause of contention. I'm not just talking about the bad drivers... or traffic, or the hordes of people flooding the stores and maybe not treating retail workers as nice as they should (my husband, who works at Sam's Club, is well aware of this sad side of Christmastime.)
No, what I'm talking about is the contention that comes between spouses in a marriage at Christmastime.
Maybe Ryan and I just have more opinions than the average couple. Or maybe we just like to disagree over everything. (It's quite possible) But I highly doubt that we are the only ones.
For us, a big bone of contention for the last THREE years has been over a real Christmas tree. I never had a real Christmas tree growing up (except, funny story, I actually did have a real Christmas tree twice growing up, and the reason I don't remember that is going to be another story I'll tell later.) Ryan ALWAYS had a real tree. And to him, it isn't right unless you have a real tree. THIS is not the contention part, because I didn't mind getting a real tree. However, the contention started our first Christmas together because we didn't make enough money to buy a tree or any other decorations. I was devastated because I LOVE Christmas and I LOVE Christmas decorations. I was willing to look for a used fake tree but Ryan told me if we couldn't have a real tree, then we couldn't have a tree at all. *cue contention* haha luckily, we had family members who were so kind and so good at lighting the world that they cut down two trees when they went as a family and brought us one, along with a bunch of ornaments, lights, and other Christmas decorations.
Another source of contention for us was the tree stand itself. Ryan doesn't believe in plastic tree stands. So we had to buy a metal stand. However, the tree that we had our first year didn't fit in the tree stand so he had to cut up a two by four piece of wood and screw it to the tree trunk in order to get it to stand up. Two years later and we were still using this tree stand and every year I dread the night that the tree gets put up because Ryan has to cut up a two by four and screw it to the tree, despite everything going wrong (Poor Ryan is a magnet for everything going wrong) there are normally a few swear words said and this year the tree was put back in the corner, wrapped up in the rope and not in a tree stand because Ryan couldn't get it to work. This year I was smart enough to think "There is no way EVERY single person that buys a real Christmas tree has to nail two by fours to the trunk to get it to fit in the stand. And after some google searching, I realized there are SMALLER tree stands. However, the cheap ones are plastic, so that caused some contention, but Ryan, in a huge show of love for me, came home from home depot with a cheap, smaller tree stand and our tree is up, and hopefully every year from now on, it will be up quickly and easily. We'll hold onto our metal tree stand and one day when we aren't poor college students we will buy a gigantic Christmas tree and use this metal stand and all will be right in Ryan's Christmas tree world.
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| It's not so bad now though, huh? |
This story is funny to me now that our tree us up, but I was just a little bit grumpy and impatient while waiting for it. In that grumpy period, I heard a few other stories similar to mine.
In my parents situation, the opposite happened. My Mom grew up with real Christmas Trees, but my Dad HATES them. And if you know my Dad, he almost never gets angry. He's one of the most patient, happy, and optimistic people I know. According to my mom (while telling the story), the two things that really get him worked up are: fixing the garbage disposal and real Christmas trees. (I would also like to add to this that he also gets pretty upset when new furniture/house appliances are ruined. Since gum was banned from our lives for years and years after one kid left a chewed up piece of gum on the carpet and my dad sat in it.) I don't remember ever having a real Christmas tree, and the reason is because the last time we had one I was probably 4 or 5 and we had just moved into a brand new house. My parents picked out a tree, set it up and got it all decorated. My mom had even made a green tree skirt to go underneath. At some point in the middle of the night the tree fell over, and ornaments and tree needles were all over the place and the water spilled on the carpet. My dad woke up to see what the noise was and was so frustrated with the tree that he took the entire thing and threw it onto the front porch, lights and all, and found a giant green stain on the brand new carpet where the water had spilled onto the new green tree skirt. He spent all night cleaning the carpet and vacuuming up needles and then went to bed around 4:30 am, only to be woken up by my brothers arguing over whether the garage door was called a garage or a garage door. And my mom woke up to a Christmas tree on the front porch. So, that's why we never had a real Christmas tree growing up.
Anyways, the point of this post is not to focus on the contention at Christmas time but what I have done to fight it away and focus on the real point of the season.
I was having the hardest time for the first few weeks of December because nothing seemed to be going the way I wanted it to go and I kept blaming Ryan for having to work long hours at work (when really I should be blaming Sam's Club. Sam's club is a ruiner of Christmas Spirit. Just sayin'.) I was annoyed about our Christmas tree, and I was bummed that we didn't end up getting to decorate the tree as a family. I was sad that all of our plans with friends kept falling through and I was grumpy about how little time Ryan and I had together between our two jobs and his finals.
I finally had to kneel down to pray for help taking this frustration away from me. I desperately wanted December to be a time for our family to make memories, for us to focus on the Savior, and for Rose to begin to learn what Christmas is really all about but I just couldn't shake the gloomy air I felt over everything. I kept crying (thanks pregnancy hormones) and I just needed help feeling grateful. The change wasn't immediate but a quote I read that really has been helping me is this one:
"The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives." - President Russell M. Nelson
I was focusing too much on what I thought Christmas should look like. They weren't bad things, I wasn't trying to make Christmas a commercial affair or anything, but even magical family time and decorating Christmas trees together isn't what Christmas is all about. The most important thing that we should be focusing on at Christmas time is the Savior and what we have because of Him. I was still focusing on what wasn't happening for me and not on all the blessings that I do have. And I was putting the blame on Ryan even though what we don't have is just as much out of his control as it is out of mine. I realized that I needed to start showing appreciation for how hard Ryan is working for Rose and I and how much he loves us that he is willing to work such long hours at work even though he is dead tired all the time. I needed to show appreciation for the circumstances that allow me to work at night so that I can be home during the day with Rose so that she still gets to be with a parent during this season and even though we aren't at a place where Ryan can go to all the Christmas events with us, Rose and I were still able to walk down to Pioneer park to see the lights turn on and a firework show few weeks ago. And Ryan is home long enough most nights before I go to work that the three of us can read a short scripture about the Savior's life and hang an ornament on the tree together. It's not the picture perfect Christmas season I dream of, but all in all I can see how blessed we really are and I hope that one day when we aren't so exhausted and stretched thin, that we will still be able to be reminded to make sure our focus is on Christ first and everything else second.
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