It’s amazing what you can learn by reading the funeral industry’s trade publications. For instance, I learned that in the two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, there a spike of between 3% and 9% in terms of natural deaths. There is not, contrary to the persistent myth, a spike in suicides. (That, according to several studies would be in August, and may be, at least partially, attributed to tree pollen. Go figure.)

I think that the reason the Christmas suicide myth has hung around so long is that a lot of us don’t subscribe to the “merry,” “jolly,” or “happy” descriptions of the holidays, leaning more toward the “blue,” “depressive,” and “dejected” side.  

There are probably a lot of reasons for this. Some of us just don’t have the personality to get up to “merry” and sustain it. I’ve contended for years that I have about a 24-hour merry Christmas window. Some of us had disappointing Christmases as children, and probably more of us have had disappointing Christmases as adults. When we’re kids, we’re disappointed that we didn’t get something we wanted. When we’re adults, we’re disappointed that haven’t given those we love something that they want.

The stories are different with each generation. In my dad’s time, they got an orange or two, and that was it. My own story is the year that Santa passed over our house and forgot to stop. It seemed that my parents had entrusted my grandfather to fill Santa’s bag for them (since what I was getting was available in Raleigh and that’s where granddaddy lived.) Unfortunately, he wasn’t familiar with the Christmas rush, and when he got there, what I had wanted and expected was sold out. I ended up with an envelope with $20 and a short letter of apology from Santa Claus.

In my children’s generation, it was about giving them what we didn’t have, which resulted in staying up all night putting toys together and hoping that they would last through Christmas day. To this day, I haven’t forgiven the designers of the Lost in Space game or of Barbie’s Townhouse.

Now, with the grandchildren, I don’t know what the stories will be. Perhaps that Santa couldn’t fit the Prius into his sleigh. That’ll be for generations to come.

But I do know this: Christmas doesn’t do this to us. We do it to ourselves by getting caught up in something that has little or nothing to do with Christmas. That’s how nearly 20% of the annual retail spending is done during the Christmas season. And along with each of these purchases comes a hundred unanswered questions and a load of guilt because we don’t always have the answers. “Is this what she really wants?” “Is it the right size (color, cut, etc.)?” Have I treated all of the equivalent relations equivalently?” “What does ‘usually shipped in two to six days’ really mean when it’s eight days until Christmas?”

One way out of this would be to give everybody an orange, then contribute the balance of the $752 (2016’s average expenditure on Christmas gifts) to a homeless shelter or a similar cause in keeping with the spirit of Christmas.

But most of us are not going to do that. I’m sure that my basic Christmas guilt at not doing what I should for all of those I love would be exponentially expanded. Instead, to get through the season without pouting or spreading gloom to all around me, I’ve adopted three basic tactics:

1.   I’ll actually put thought into selecting the gifts I give. That way I can tell myself I tried. If I fail, I fail. Won’t be the first time.

2.    I’ll try to take every opportunity to pass along a feeling of good cheer to everyone I encounter, even the guy who ran the stop sign and almost took off the front of my car. I smiled and waved to him with all five fingers.

3.    I won’t pass up an opportunity to give to those I don’t know. In the multiple levels of charity described by the Jews, the greatest is where neither the giver nor receiver is known to the other. That works for Christmas, too.

Beyond that we’ll do what we do every Christmas: try to keep some focus on what we as Christians are really celebrating. It has nothing to do with trees, gifts, ornaments, or parties. It has everything to do with the birth of the Christ child, a gift that cannot disappoint us.