I hate December. December inspires in me overwhelming levels of guilt and shame like no other month. It’s the month that we reflect on the past year and try to catch up on all of the things that we failed to accomplish, to provide, to achieve, to offer. It’s the month of scrambling to give: give presents, give donations, give photo cards that show and tell how great your year has been. It is the month of overwhelming expectations that I know I cannot achieve and the month that I have to choose whether to be a good family member, good mother, good citizen or good friend, because I know I cannot do them all. Even as I write this, my face is warm, my chest is tight, and I snap at my kids for doing nothing more than playing boisterously. I am immersed in shame at the prospect of judgment for how I will fail to end the year.
Perhaps that’s why I love Thanksgiving so much. It is a simple holiday for which there are so few obligations. Your husband plans the dinner, you manage the invitations and necessary accommodations, your husband spends the entire day cooking, you laugh with friends and family, and you spend an hour cleaning up. That’s it. You give food and friendship. You receive food and friendship. Even this year when I could eat so little of the dinner, I still found joy in it.
For Thanksgiving you don’t have to come up with crafty or personal presents for all of your friends and the parents of your children’s friends. You don’t have to comb through a year’s worth of photos to create a photo card and photo album, then rake through your outdated address book to determine who receives cards and who no longer makes the list. You don’t have to choose between the convenience of having Shutterfly mail your cards impersonally and the hours of labeling and signing to show you care. You don’t have to investigate which causes are given greater weight, then agonize over stretching your donations among all of the charities you support because you failed to give throughout the year. You don’t have to ensure that the trimmings for Christmas and Hanukkah are given semi-equivalent weight. You don’t have to research the best presents for all of your nieces and nephews, parents, in laws, and your own family. You don’t have to fret over the equity of the presents that you’re giving to your children, while lamenting that they are so privileged and need nothing that you’ve given, and this holiday like so many others only teaches them to want more and give less.
For Thanksgiving, there’s food, there is laughter, and traditionally there is thanks. For December there is dread. When did giving become so overwhelming?