Happy no-contact holidays!
I’ve never been a fan of Christmas or New Year festivities. Other than the needless marketing and annoying carols, the worst part of December was the family gatherings. I dreaded them.
The buildup would begin in August, which is also a popular time for family meetings over here. It’s a long(ish) school holiday month, so a lot of people go upcountry because there’s time to spare. But that’s when the relatives plan the December meetings, so I’d spend August to November dreading which uncle’s house we’d go to or the long journey to my grandparents’ house.
This is how bad it was: I’d visited my grandparents in Nyeri for as long as I can remember, at least once a year. But I cannot tell you where they live. I don’t know the directions. It’s like I’d zone out an hour into the journey. My soul would die a bit more every minute, and the road trip took between 6 and 7 hours. By the time we arrived, I couldn’t tell you where we were. I just remember the rickety wooden gate and the cold air at the foot of Mt. Kenya. I cannot tell you how I got there.
I was always unwelcome.
There was a language issue, and I’m not sure who’s to blame. We spoke English and Kiswahili at home. I grew up speaking Kimeru, my father’s language. But because the marriage failed and he left, I was very aware that speaking his language was a bad thing. So I stopped.
However, my mother either didn’t teach me Kikuyu or thought I didn’t care to learn it. It was a strange one. I could hear (and still do hear) Kikuyu, but speaking it is tricky. My grandparents would want to be greeted in Kikuyu, and I’d get so flustered. My mother might have made it my fault, suggesting that I didn’t want to learn it or I was too dumb to learn it. But we never spoke it at home. I just kept getting embarrassed in front of my relatives.
Again, I don’t know who to blame here, but it made me hate the holidays even more. My cousins had come to know me and my late sister as the “wazungus”, the foreigners, the Caucasians. Not helpful.
There was always a fight.
Some uncle would get drunk in the village bar and come back to the house and start something up. Some aunt (well, several aunts) would take the opportunity to spill bile all over the place. I had no headphones or smartphone or books to escape to. It was a hateful time.
Obviously, I wasn’t suddenly going to be warm and friendly under such circumstances. I was already miserable enough from the road trip. I couldn’t find any privacy, any spot to myself. And then I had to listen to uncles fighting and aunts insulting each other, and I’d be there soaking it up like a sponge. Merry Christmas, right?
The trip back home wasn’t any better.
I had to listen to my mother badmouthing her parents and siblings all the way home, and a bit afterwards too. She was the only “good child” in her family because she bought diabetes medication for her mother, all by herself. That tells you everything about the family dynamics right there.
And what could I say to that? A lot of nothing. I’d block out her voice most of the time. It wasn’t exactly a conversation I could contribute to. So I stayed quiet and couldn’t wait to get back to my room and shut the door and sleep.
Then I cut ties.
Early 2016, around March or April. My mother had become unbearable. It was an impossible choice, but I made it. No regrets.
The months that followed were turbulent, to put it mildly. I was shattered and bleeding and needed to put my pieces together. I failed a lot. I lost all my friends, couldn’t find work, sold or gave away everything I had.
But I will not forget that first December. I was down to a handful of utensils, some clothes, a mattress and a blanket. I remember thinking, “No more family gatherings again.” Even though I had nothing material and my prospects were even worse, I was happy. I had a ton of problems. But this was one problem I’d never have again.
I would see people packing for their trips upcountry, or hauling bags of groceries and supplies for the Christmas cooking, and I would feel a wash of relief. No more road trips, no more arguments, no more nastiness. I was done.
The holidays are me-time.
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t ever want company over the holidays. I have decades of unpleasant family meetings to recover from. Honestly, I’d rather be working on Christmas and New Year than think of anything family related.
Part of me even worries about future in-laws. I’m not going to be a cat lady all my life (I sure hope not), but what happens if I can’t avoid joining my partner’s relatives for the holidays? What excuses could I give? It’s not even a religious thing, it’s not about meeting because it’s Christmas. It’s meeting “because we’re a family” and that thought is very uncomfortable, even if the future in-laws will be decent folks.
I understand that some people are lucky enough to look forward to the holidays with their families. And I know mine is an extreme case, because I never recommend cutting family ties unless it was a life-or-death situation. But I wonder how many people are just gritting their teeth through Christmas, dreading its arrival and glad when it’s over.
Families are a tricky thing.
We don’t get to choose where we’re born, but we all have a built-in knowledge of how family should be. We know it by instinct. We rarely articulate it. So, what happens when families let us down? Cutting ties is unnatural, counterintuitive, painful. It’s taboo. Instead, we quietly take the abuse once a year, sometimes multiple times a year. We brace ourselves for the ordeal, then we get as far away as possible from our relatives. Rinse and repeat.
I don’t miss mine. I don’t feel like I’m incomplete because I go nowhere over Christmas. There’s no harm in that. If anything, I revel in the peace of mind. The holiday spirit now makes sense. Collins Dictionary says it’s “the positive feeling people experience during holiday periods such as Christmas.” 100%. I hope it stays that way.
