Well, it’s the start of another week. For some people thats a great thing…and for other people, not so much unfortunately, but…then here come the holidays.
We just got through Thanksgiving here in America, but now pretty much the whole world is head for the holiday season of Christmas and New years. We have to get through all that before we get to 2017.
You know I loved the holiday season when I was a kid, my mom always made it so fun for us. But ever since I grew up…more and more most of the holiday’s really just kind of annoy me.
I’m not alone either. It’s kind of crazy, but at a time when people are supposed to be filled with love and happiness and joy, a lot of people are really sad, and miserable. The weather is usually crappy, the days are short. The financial and personal problems people have always seem bigger when there is a holiday to deal with.
A lot of people think that suicide rates and depression go up around the holiday’s…I believed that until I researched it and found out it wasn’t true. It turns out suicide and depression are more prevalent during the spring and summer months, into the fall.
That doesn’t change the fact though, that a lot of people have a really hard time around the holiday’s, and we as men should be prepared for that so we can make it better on the people that we can influence.
The reason I get annoyed by the holidays myself is mainly because of the mass commercialization of it. It makes me angry. I don’t like the fact that the corporate world has completely taken over, they tell us when to spend our money and what to spend it on, and for who.
I see people go into full on panic mode, spending money they really don’t have in order to buy something that someone else doesn’t really need. Everybody is worried about what to get for who, and I think it really cast an ugly net over the whole thing.
I really don’t buy gifts for the holiday’s anymore. Pretty much, I stopped doing it a few years back, I think partly because I have such an aversion to being told what to do. I felt like I was being told I HAD to buy everybody something and I didn’t like that, so I stopped. You might think I would have experienced some negativity around that from my family but surprisingly…I haven’t.
I think this is why; there is something that I do love about the entire holiday season, and that is the experience of family. Just being together and playing board games, eating great food and telling stories. To me that is what the holiday season is all about, and I focus on that aspect of it, and no one seems to miss the gifts.
So how can we help, during the holidays, as men? Well, It is not always native for us
