This series I have written for CPTSD Foundation has centered on how celebrating Christmas with our dysfunctional families when we were kids, was like living in hell. Thus, the title.
We have examined truthfully, and perhaps painfully, the facts which made us so miserable and how they affect us today.
However, this article is focused on a more positive note, how to turn our present Christmas’ into peaceful and joyful events.
Letting Go of Faulty Beliefs
The hell we experienced when we were kids in our homes was very real. I wish it were not. However, what do we do now that we are grown up?
Let me state for the record that if you are trying to overcome a severely traumatic childhood on your own, you will fail. Please do not try this alone. It is inordinately painful and you will fail. By not allowing another human being to help you navigate through the dark waters of your past, you are repeating history. Didn’t you spend your entire childhood alone and hurting? Why do that now? Why not change that pattern?
There is a quote which goes something like this, “To get places we have never been, we must do things we have never done…” I realize this is a loose translation of the original quote, however I am sure you understand the overarching concept here.
Do different to feel different.
In therapy, I have learned to feel the pain I either was too afraid to fee or had denied myself to feel then, and to grieve. Once I was allowed to feel this pain, I was able to calm and soothe that little hurting girl finally. I held myself (in my mind and reality) and said words of comfort which calmed myself in the past and present. I made it clear that I would never, ever allow anyone to treat me like that again and that I deserve more. Most importantly, I told me that what happened was in no way my fault.
It took repeatedly soothing myself many times before I finally came to understand deep in my heart that those days were over, and now, what happens is entirely up to me.
I had to let go of the fantasy that I would someday wake up and find my family to be like the Bradys, and that the behaviors of my family were my fault.
I had also let go of one more crucially faulty piece of reasoning—that I can never be happy today because of what happened yesterday.
Yesterday’s Pain Need Not Hamper Today’s Joy
To be realistic, the pain of what happened during those Christmases long ago will never be totally forgotten. You would have to experience total amnesia from a horrendous accident for that to happen. However, the pain from yesterday need not hamper today’s joy.
How?
The answer is simple (at least in concept), we need to replace those horrible memories with new ones.
I know that what I’m suggesting may seem counterproductive or even insulting. Shouldn’t we remain miserable because of what happened in our pasts? Why should I allow myself to feel joyful when I had such a miserable childhood?
I understand those thought processes. We all go through stages where we want to be angry and hang onto the pain. After all, the pain I have now proves what I went through back then is really real. This is common and to be expected when first recovering from painful and traumatic childhood experiences.
However, eventually, if you allow healing to happen, you will find those thought processes to be counterproductive and you will truly crave better for yourself.
Making new memories with those you love today is enormously helpful in letting go of trauma from the past and allowing yourself to be happy despite it.
Make New Christmas Memories with Loved Ones
Because we had such a traumatic time in our childhoods with our families, why not spend time and effort making great memories for our kids. I’m not advocating for spending vast amounts of money or for putting out so much effort trying to make their Christmas perfect. I’m talking about some simple and fun ways to make great memories for the kids and for yourself.
Let’s examine together some new traditions we can all implement to help erase the bizarre memories we have of our childhood Christmases which will make great memories our kids will remember forever.
The Scents of Christmas. There are tons of ways to make smells which will remind you and your kids of love, fun, and togetherness. You can bake cookies, make homemade bread, buy scented pine cones, or even a scented Christmas tree.
If you have a fireplace, light a nice fire to fill the house with the scent of burning firewood to make your home feel, well, homey.
Don’t worry if the cookies turn out all lumpy or if your bread fails to rise. These traditions will still make some fun memories as you and your kids laugh and together, make fun of the mistakes. Eat them anyway so you all can laugh at how bad (or surprisingly good) they taste.
The Sights of Christmas. Depending on where you live, there are different experiences you can share which are the sights of Christmas. The first thing to do if you want to have a welcoming visual “Christmasy” air to your home is to put up a tree and decorate it together. Have the kids make ornaments from whatever materials meet their developmental stage and help them hang the handmade ornaments on the tree. Allow the kids to put on the garland and the tinsel.
Don’t stress over whether the tree turns out perfect or even pretty. It’s the experience of being together and having fun that matters.
The Gift That Keeps Giving. As a family, go to the nearest discount store and buy some small gifts. Purchase hats, gloves, scarves, socks, and small trinkets for both men and women.
After returning home, help the kids wrap up each item individually, bows and all. Then take the hats, gloves, scarves, and socks to the homeless on the street or to a local homeless shelter. You can choose to be anonymous and leave the presents on park benches where you know the homeless spend their time, or you can walk right up to them as a family and hand these wrapped gifts to them.
Then, you can take some of the trinkets you wrapped up and go visiting the neighbors. If you know someone in your neighborhood who is elderly, visit them first giving them the gifts without accepting anything in return. After the elderly, just go door to door spreading cheer.
To make your gift giving even more memorable, sing Christmas carols to those you are giving the presents to.
Just think of how you and your kids will feel after completing these feats of charity. Talk about replacing old sad memories with new happy ones! These new memories are truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Go Sightseeing. Nothing is more fun than going out in the car during the holiday season and looking at the decorations other people have put up. Spend an hour in the car driving about and ewwing and ahhing over the bright and often unique ways people have found to spread Christmas joy.
What If I Am Alone at Christmas? What Then?
I have no children or spouse, so I have had to work hard to help myself make new and lasting memories to replace the old. It isn’t easy to be alone on a holiday which many see as a joyful family time. However, there are some ways to make your Christmas joyful despite being alone.
Go to the Store. I’m not talking about getting involved in the melee of Christmas shopping here. What I’m suggesting is to go and observe people. It’s much more fun than it sounds! Sit in a position where you can observe folks as they hustle, and bustle while doing their Christmas shopping and make up stories in your mind about them.
You will be surprised how much fun this can be. I have done this many a time and not just at Christmas time. I always feel amused and gleeful as I sit unobserved and make up funny stories about people I do not know.
Give to Needy Children. If you want to have fun replacing memories when you are alone at Christmas, then this suggestion is the one for you. Go to a business or store which displays names of needy children on a Christmas tree and ask them for an entire family of children.
Then, go out and enjoy yourself thoroughly in the toy section of the department store. You talk about fun! Because you have taken an entire family of children, you aren’t limited to buying just one toy, you can purchase all you want. You can also buy a stocking and goodies to stuff them with for each child.
I also purchase a gift for the parent of the kids. I do this by buying a small gender-neutral gift.
After you have made your purchases, go home, put on some Christmas carols, light a lovely candle and wrap those presents. Enjoy the process and giggle as you imagine the faces of these kids on Christmas morning!
Although you will never see who you have purchased the gifts for, just the act of purchasing and giving these gifts will truly bring a smile to your face every time you think about in the following years.
Spend Christmas Nurturing Yourself. You will notice I did not say indulging yourself. That’s because indulging can mean drinking or other unhealthy activities. Nurturing yourself is quite different.
Nurturing yourself can include many things, and I’m going to make a short list to get you started.
Give Yourself Hugs. I don’t mean necessarily that you must physically hug yourself, although that I do and that would be nice. There are other ways to give yourself cuddles during the Christmas season.
- Put on your favorite music and sing your heart out.
- If you can, save up some money and treat yourself to a few nights in a hotel in another town.
- Buy a special present for yourself. Make sure it is something you really want and not something you necessarily need. Wrap it up and open it on Christmas morning.
- Buy yourself the toy you always wanted when you were small. Even if you are old like me, you’re sure to find it on eBay.
- Binge watch your favorite movies. Make sure they are comedies or light-hearted drama.
Ground Yourself Firmly in Today
There will inevitably be flashbacks of the horror that was your childhood during the making of new memories, but these flashbacks don’t have to run your life. Nor do they need to relegate you to living swallowed up by your grief.
Allow yourself to experience the flashbacks and their accompanying emotions but afterward ground yourself back in today.
Acknowledge the grief and then reorient yourself to where and when you are today. You are no longer living in a loud, dysfunctional household where the adults were preoccupied with harming their children rather than loving them. Now you are all grown up and in control of your environment and how you treat yourself.
The Moral of the Story
Whether you are religious or spiritual or do not necessarily identify with either, Christmas time is a spiritual event. There can be no denying that the ghosts of Christmas haunt our homes during this season of giving. Which ones spend time in your home and mind are up to you.
We all have the same two choices.
Will you entertain the ghosts of the past full of anger, fear, and dread? Or will you enjoy the season filling it with new memories for yourself of love and peace?
Making Christmas time a joyful experience after you have lived through adverse childhood experiences takes effort. The old dread will always begin to creep in as November arrives every year, but by having made new traditions with either yourself or your chosen loved ones, you will have ammunition to fight back.
The moral of the story?
I’ll let some quotes from some popular Christmas programs explain what the moral of the story of this series of articles on surviving Christmas is all about.
A quote for Christians, from A Charlie Brown Christmas:
A quote for Christians, from A Charlie Brown Christmas:
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this [shall be] a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. 
That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
Indeed, the Christ child is the reason Christmas was invented. Not to celebrate the lights, food, and presents but to celebrate the arrival of a very special person who has changed the world with his revolutionary teachings of loving your neighbor.
Merry Christmas!
A quote for those of you who celebrate Hanukah, from The Polar Express:
“Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.” — The Conductor (Tom Hanks)
Hanukah is a time to celebrate miracles and there can be no greater miracle than experiencing peace of mind during the holiday season. The miracle of love whether you are alone or with your family is what Hanukah is all about.
Happy Hanukah!
A quote for those of you who celebrate Kwanzaa, from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas:
“He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. Maybe Christmas, he thought… doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps… means a little bit more!” – Narrator (Boris Karloff)
Kwanzaa means more than just lighting candles and eating a feast. It is a celebration of heritage and spirituality. What better way to experience Kwanzaa than with the people you love who are in your life today showing them love and tenderness.
Happy Kwanzaa!
A quote for those of you who are not religious, from A Charlie Brown Christmas:
“I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”
Ah yes, we all need a little love do we not? Just like the small tree that nobody wanted in the Charlie Brown special, we can change our reactions to the holidays by spending time propping them up with much self-love. By wrapping ourselves up in all the love and understanding we can muster, we can change our outlook of what Christmas means and turn an ugly experience into a joyful one.
In Closing
Christmas will be here tomorrow. We here at CPTSD Foundation want to send you our warmest wishes for you and yours to have a happy and joyful Christmas.
Remember, you are never alone. We understand how you feel and where you are in your healing because we have been there ourselves.
If you find yourself having trouble during this next week, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
From our hearts to yours, Happy Holidays!
My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.
I don’t understand the day myself, i cannot feel anything even close to joy about it, it always felt like i was going through the motions and acting but i never actually got it.
guess that’s what comes from severe abuse and neglect from truly evil parents, a complete lack of connection and a dislike of closeness to anyone.
This is great advice for people who have money, but if you’re broke, it doesn’t work, because you are saying “buy this, buy that” all the time in this article. If you are a broke college student who survived incest and human trafficking, like me, you can try walking around caroling alone at random people’s houses to spread cheer and they give you money to help pay your rent if you tell them that it would help and you need it, with I usually do because student loans do not last all winter. You won’t get more until late January. (But don’t go inside in case they want to rape you, I got propositioned by someone that way, and don’t eat anything they give you because it is probably drugged so they can rape you.) As long as you stand outside their door to sing Christmas Carols, you kind of feel sort of part of the Christmas spirit but kind of like Jack Skellington from Haloweentown wondering, “What’s This” as you look in the windows and you see them all safe and warm and together with the little tree and the kissing and absolutely no one is dead, those are lines from the song, and they relate to how I feel.
In order to be safe and warm and avoid the people who want to rape single women carolers, you can ask a nursing home if they will let you come by to carol to the residents and make sure to report your Uber driver if they sexually harass you on your way there or back and then you won’t have to pay. I usually pay and don’t get harassed, but this last Christmas I was harassed by both my to and from drivers when I went caroling at the nursing home. I guess that is the sort of guy who would drive an Uber on Christmas, because the nice Uber drivers would stay home with their families. The residents and staff at the nursing home really appreciate you coming to sing to them and then you feel less alone, even if your grandma was raped by your stepdad at her nursing home and there was nothing you could do to stop him in the past.
You can try going to Life Church Online which is an online church you can get to even if you have no car and the bus stops running due to the holiday. There is a chat room in which you can pray and talk to others going to church. It is free.
To cope with your trauma at Christmastime, I suggest the music therapy of singing. “What’s This” from Nightmare Before Christmas, to acknowledge past Christmases were dark and terrifying, revisiting the scene from Babe, where the duck is screaming “Christmas equals carnage” because they killed his girlfriend and almost killed Babe, but then Babe became a sheep pig because he learned the secret code of “Baa Ram Ewe” and never had to die, eating a vegan meal to stop the animal deaths at Christmas which is similar to abuse of humans at Christmas, and watching some sort of story that showed raped people getting some sort of resolution to their trauma and happily ever after like Kite Runner or Les Innocents. Probably Les Innocents makes more sense because they are nuns who got raped by soldiers during WW2 and then they have to find help and try to save all the babies without being killed, because apparently the Pope during WW2 had nuns executed if they got raped. Be sure to watch with subtitles because it is in French and Polish. Unless you speak both French and Polish.
I tried caroling at the hospital but they said I was disrupting them and they couldn’t hear the patients and they needed me to leave, but I got to sing one or two songs and some nurses and doctors were smiling at me in-between patients. So I am glad I could make some people smile.
Also my friend brought by her adult coloring book and we colored giraffes together but we didn’t give each other gifts because we were both totally broke. It was nice to have someone over to do art with and to hug afterwards. I gave her the giraffes as a gift but she did not give me anything right then. Probably she forgot because she also is a traumatized person with a terrible abusive family. I enjoyed being with her and I’m sure we probably sang something to each other. We do that anyway. We like that song “For Good” from Wicked. 🙂 It’s a fun duet for us. She does other things for me like take me out to eat and pay for both of us when she can afford it. She is richer than me, has a full time job. She was in grad school for a while but couldn’t juggle them both. I am a full time grad student.
I am unemployed and denied disability despite being disabled with trauma induced seizures everyday. So I live on very tiny student loans and get my food from the food pantry. About going to the homeless shelter to give away stuff, it’s fine if you do it as a group, but do not go by yourself to a homeless shelter to give away your stuff because you are going to get molested. Likely groped at the very least. There are a lot of ex-felons there and they want to grope you. Trust me on this, I have lived at homeless shelters after I escaped human trafficking. That is another kind of hell with staff and homeless men who rape homeless women at Christmas and all the rest of the year too. I’ve been raped by staff and residents at the shelters, so I know they are bloodthirsty monsters over there, but I at least avoided dying from hypothermia. There are also married men who go to homeless shelters pretending that they want to help but actually just want to rape homeless women. Had to run away from some of them. Also there are men in Protestent churches who pretend that they want to help homeless women and they offer to provide them with housing in order to rape and/or traffick them to get money for the church or themselves. I’ve experienced that too.
Its a much better idea to go to a nursing home where you can be safe. Most likely it will not be an abusive environment like the ones where your grandma got raped by your relatives or the nursing home staff. Elder abuse. Yes. So anyway if you do see that, then you can report to the human services, usually it’s the same phone number for child abuse. Now that you are an adult and more empowered, you can report what you see or understand. Don’t blame yourself for what you didn’t see or couldn’t understand until later on.
Also it’s important to not expect anything from anyone you barely know, like college professors or classmates or roommates or people living in your dorm. They do not care if you have a good Christmas and they will do absolutely nothing to help you have one. It’s up to you to make a good Christmas for yourself and not feel bad or abandoned when everyone leaves you after knowing that you will be spending Christmas alone. But it is a huge relief when they come back from break and you have some people to wave at in the halls and noise, an not just snow and cold and no people and silence all the time. You’d better watch a lot of cheesy Christmas movies and sing a lot of songs to fill in the silence and the aloneness. It can help. Also reading books and going down your to do list, in between taking breaks for sobbing, seizures, flashbacks, nightmares, napping to rest after all that, and so on.
Just ignore the stupid people (especially Christians) who want to project into your future that you will eventually have a husband and children to celebrate Christmas with which means they don’t need to spend this Christmas with you, with themselves being warm and inviting. They can’t actually predict the future. They just don’t want to do anything with you, but they don’t know how to responsibly say that. So they give you to an imaginary family they made up in their heads. But it’s up to you, your future. Not them. If you want to be celibate an just get more friends to celebrate Christmas with, you can go do that. 🙂 They do not understand.
If people harass you for being a vegan and they tell you that they hate you, and try to tell you to eat meat for Christmas, just go in your room and shut your door and try to forget them. They do not understand that you and Harish Ayer (animal rights activist male human trafficking survivor) both felt like part of the food and being slaughtered for the Christmas dinner to appease the pedophiles that drank your blood (in my case) or otherwise got your blood in your mouth (both of us). Watch some cool vegan documentaries like Forks Over Knives and make some instagram posts about how going vegan can save the world, the animals, the environment, etc. Do something productive instead of thinking about people making you bleed and enjoying it and eating it along with the rest of the meat.
If people refuse to invite you over to their Christmas dinner because you are a vegan, just ignore them and make a nice meal for yourself and then film yourself making it and put it on YouTube where you hopefully would get some comments and friendly posts from people who would appreciate your new recipes. Christmas is a great time to come up with new vegan recipes with whichever ingredients you can find at the food pantry that are vegan (they don’t have much). Anyway it is a good time to test your creativity when it comes to making meals for yourself within the limits of your budget. Just try not to dwell on your sister deleting your old recipe video for Christmas that never made it on to YouTube because she deleted it before you could post it, and telling you she hates you, hates vegans, and wants you dead and be glad you disowned your entire family a while ago. You now have the freedom to post a gazillion recipe videos to YouTube and no one is going to be able to delete them except you. Hence the name “YouTube” because no one is going to strong-arm you into giving them your password so they can ruin all your joy and make you suicidal.
If you tried to commit suicide in the past, its a good idea to celebrate that you are still alive and no longer suicidal, and make sure you have your domestic violence and suicide hotlines posted up in big letters on your computer and/or wall very easy to see during the looooong month that is winter break in college and call them every day if you want to or need to. They can help you get through this. That is what they are there for.
I agree about giving yourself hugs and singing to yourself and the other self care stuff except for the part about going to a hotel because that costs a lot of money and some of us have been gang raped at hotels. IE Me. I prefer all girl dorm rooms in backpacker hostels.
When I was teaching abroad though and I was able to go to South Korea which was a very different place that doesn’t put as much emphasis on Christmas because a lot of people are Buddhists it was a lot easier to not have so many flashbacks and just enjoy December and play in the snow. I also had more friends there and my friends had children so that also helped me to celebrate. We built a snowman with the head of a dog which was really cool!
You can also do some exposure therapy to Christmas by watching Christmas specials throughout the year and journalling all your feelings about it so that when it actually comes in December, you won’t be overwhelmed with sadness and terror. I really appreciate my Amazon Prime subscription and it is only $8 per month and I can give myself pretty great exposure therapy thanks to that as well as catch up on all the Christmas specials that I missed like Prancer 2 an my family forbade me from watching because my family hated Christmas and literally worshipped Satan (I mean they are literal Satanists so they tried to kill me on some Christmases to please Satan they said…so here I am still alive, thanks to Jesus.) I told them good always wins and if they killed me, I would just wish Jesus a happy birthday in person and they wouldn’t be there for the party up in heaven (or ever). LOL.
So I also take time to pray and thank Jesus for literally saving me every time they tried to murder me and for saving my soul for dying on the cross. 🙂 It’s great to be a Christian and not be in a cult anymore. I mean I never wanted to be in a cult but I was born into it, so I’m glad I got out. They were in the Baha’i cult which they remain in today and then they got into the Satanic worship stuff later on which they used to justify torturing me and they made friends with people in other cults like the Seth Demon cult and the Reiki practitioners cult and occult cults and who knows what else??? So yeah I’m glad to be free from being surrounded by drug addicts and violent cult people and ex-felons and KKK members and who knows what else. No more hanging with the riff raff for me. 🙂 I hope.
Anyway I’m here today in July, reading this blog, because I was giving myself exposure therapy by watching the Christmas episode of a TV show I’m following and it brought up some negative feelings and pain and I wanted to share. Thank you and God bless you.
I am sorry you have been through so much pain. I hear it in every word you wrote. Christmas is a painful time of year for many, including me, although I have been through 30 years of treatment. It is a reminder of the love and acceptance we didn’t receive as children. It is critical to allow yourself to contact your inner child and let them know they are no longer alone because they have you to be their mommy. I hope you find peace in your Christianity. Shirley
Dr Kola Kolawole, male Psychiatrist from Hamilton Ontario had been convicted of second degree felony, forcible sexual abuse, and third degree felony forcible sodomy… molestation of three juvenile patients at the ontario facility where he worked, and sexual assault of a highschool girl in a park. My daughters been traumatized by him, and now suffers from constant nightmares of him we’re so sick and tired…. Merry Christmas
I’m so sorry! What a horrible ordeal for you and your daughter. How can we help you? You are not alone. Shirley