So I’m 18, and I love Christmas. I love buying and giving, I love all the decorations and Christmas spirit , and I love to help the community around this time of year. But my parents have never been as into it as I am. I have two older siblings, 22 & 21, and once they stopped believing in santa I feel everything somewhat died down. But I was still at the age I did, my parents didn’t want to keep the magic alive. They stopped making it fun with the cookies and such, and for most of the month my elf on the shelf sat in the same spot. Now that i’m older I don’t really care about that stuff obviously, but I’ve always put a lot of thought into giving my family nice gifts and nobody reciprocates. 2 Years ago I started buying my own gifts online for my mom, then begged her to wrap them so I had things to open in the morning. We are financially very stable so that isn’t an issue. I was just talking to my mom and she told me she didn’t want to buy me any gifts this year and It just really hurts. I feel like I always put so much thought and effort to make everyone get something they want and no one tries for me. Im not at all trying to sound “greedy” but it genuinely feels like nobody cares about my feelings and my parents know how much I love this time of year. It just makes me sad seeing girls my age go Christmas shopping with their moms and decorating together when she has no interest in doing that with me, and it would be a burden. If I talked with my mom about it she would just say not to buy her presents but I love gift giving and cannot see myself doing that. Let me know if anyone has suggestions.
Edit/ I think my siblings are somewhat the same as my parents so It’s kinda just me who wants to celebrate.
15 comments
Many people find Christmas incredibly stressful. People feel many pressures. Hopefully, one day, you will understand.
Our family stopped giving gifts years ago. We now go out for nice dinners. Much nicer.
I think you should continue doing what you want to do for Christmas. Buy gifts you feel you want to. Get yourself a few special things and save them to “open” on Christmas. Find some friends who are really into the gift-giving aspect of the holiday and get together with them for a fun holiday party.
I’m sorry it’s like this. I’m 57 years old and just LOVE the holidays.
Both my wife and I grew up in profoundly dysfunctional families. My father was an Alcoholic, my mother was chronically depressed. Christmas was a time of heightened stress. Finances were stretched out to the Max and then generally my father was drinking more because of the stress.
I pretty much hate Christmas.
What I did a few years ago is I made a decision that I would “enjoy Christmas no matter what” I spent a bit of time with a counsellor discussing what that would look like and then kept remaking the decision, over and over again.
It was fun, working really hard not to get sucked into other people’s unhappiness and mostly worked.
When you’re a kid it’s a lot of fun. Someone else is paying and doing all the work. When you’re that someone else it’s not so fun
Some people think Christmas and gift giving is just for children. Some people think it’s stressful. Some people think it’s a strain on the wallet or can’t afford it. Maybe they had bad memories around Christmas from their childhood, and now that their children are grown, they don’t feel like they have to relive their trauma for that one day. Everyone is different, and none of us can read your parents’ minds–the only way to find out is to ask them directly why they personally aren’t into it. (And even if your parents are financially stable, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can eliminate money as a possibility. People can be cautious with their money no matter how much they have of it.)
I personally love gift-giving and gift-receiving but would rather do it on my own time. I would rather not dedicate a huge pile of money to it all at once and spend a bunch of time trying to find the perfect gift at a time of year when things are pretty stressful and extra time is hard to come by.
The nice thing about getting older though is that with more independence and autonomy comes more opportunities to do what you want and carve out the life you want. You might not be able to rope your parents into it, but you can try to find friends who would be down to do gifts with you, go shopping, and decorate.
Maybe they will be more into a gift exchange where everyone takes a name from a hat? That way everyone only has to worry about one gift.
My best guess is that your parents see Christmas as a holiday for children, so they’ve chosen to opt out since you and your siblings are grown. It’s a bummer, but it’s also understandable when you consider how crazily expensive the gift-giving obligation can become when you have a large family.
If you’re determined to keep buying them, I’d suggest either adjusting your expectations to account for the likelihood that you won’t convince your parents to reciprocate, or focusing your generosity on friends and family members other than your parents.
You can give me gifts…. I will give you a gift…. Get a boyfriend…. Idk? Haven’t you heard that christmas song by taylor swift? This Christmas to save me some tears I’ll give it to someone special! I’m single. Merry Christmas ho ho ho!
I’m sorry, that does sound kind of hurtful. Are your siblings into things like that? You could also help start some new family traditions that are easier to participate in. Like getting gifts for everyone can be stressful for some people so you could do some secret Santa or white elephant style gift giving so people only need to buy one gift. I’ve never been big with christmas in that way since we never did elf or Santa clause in my house, but our main tradition has been making Christmas cookies together and doing secret Santa and occasionally decorating the Christmas tree together.
I’ll also note, you can celebrate some of those Christmas traditions with friends/community! A lot of groups/communities/jobs host ugly Christmas sweater/white elephant parties and Christmas celebrations where you could help set up decorations and stuff like that. See where you can get involved in the future to help make the time merrier
Sounds like you have everything you need and they have everything they need. Except for this is there anything else wrong? Are they not celebrating your birthday?
Man parents get tired. A lot of energy goes into Christmas. The older two got a lot of the best energy, I’m sure, and to make matters worse, now, after three kids, they are just done. I assure you, though, they would welcome all the Xmas energy you and your siblings can bring!
I feel you… I love giving gifts, I love finding things to make the person smile. I enjoy putting a lot of thought and effort into Christmas and birthday gifts. And yeah, my parents don’t really return it, either… I’ll spend time thinking about the perfect gift and end up being gifted a book. I haven’t finished a book in years.
I hope that one day, when I have my own children (I’m 23 so a bit too young for that 🙁 ), I will be able to introduce them to customs and traditions I enjoy, like baking cookies and decorating, or baking a beautiful cake for birthdays, and make them happy with gifts that are just right.
Don’t give up on it, perhaps you can find secret Santa groups in your community? Perhaps you can talk about gifting among your friends? Friends usually make a better family than the people you’re related to, anyway…
>It just makes me sad seeing girls my age go Christmas shopping with their moms and decorating together when she has no interest in doing that with me
When I was 18-22 I worked retail. I literally had to stop working retail because I would ball my eyes out for this exact reason. I’d see mothers and daughters shopping together, especially around the holidays. My mother was absent, didn’t raise me, I saw her 1-2 days a month if I was lucky. It broke my heart then to see other girls have their mom’s.
One time, I overheard a girl whining and complaining to her mom about absolutely nothing, I don’t remember now, but I was so angry she wasn’t grateful to her mother in the store I had to take a break and cry in the bathroom.
We can’t control our mothers. We can control how we enjoy the holidays. My husband’s family does a secret Santa every year. This year they used an App called Elfster. It helps with name picking and whatnot.
Perhaps you could try this with your family, or even just your siblings. or get a friend group together. Whatever is special to you.
What’s fun about growing up, is you get to begin your own traditions. Have fun, I’m sorry your mom is less enthusiastic. I know it hurts. Don’t let it ruin the fun for you however. I did let it bother me for many years. Too many.
I’m 26 and have 0 shreds of Christmas spirit left in me due to the constant bombardment of ads and pressure to spend money on the perfect gift for my family and friends. Also there is a recession happening, even if your financial situation looks good the trends are worrying. Which definitely takes the “fun” of Christmas away once you need to worry about rent, insurance, bills, emergencies.
I can totally see how after 3 kids a person has negative Christmas spirit. But I do think it would be nice of them to do something specifically for you, since you are their child and they accepted the consequences of raising a human when they had you. So I totally understand why they don’t care, but I also understand why you are saddened by this.
Some of us get zero enjoyment from this time of year and after faking it for family for years we’re just over it completely.