When I was growing up, my family celebrated Christmas.

We traveled to a Christmas tree farm and Daddy cut down a tree. We decorated it with ornaments that we treasured year after year, listened to Christmas music, and baked Christmas cookies. We wrote to Santa and woke up to piles of gifts from Santa as well as Mommy and Daddy. We gathered with extended family and feasted, exchanged gifts, and sang carols. And, as Catholics, we attended Christmas mass, soaking in the triumphant music, festive decor, and hallowed, candlelit magic of midnight mass.

But when I was in late elementary school, something happened to change my happy association with Christmas. While my family and I were in full tree-decorating, Christmas music-listening mode, something set my father off and he hefted a household object over his head and swung it down like a sledgehammer, hitting the wood floor and leaving a dent. As quick as Christmas cheer can come, it can dissipate in a moment. We all fell silent, and I left the room. When decorating resumed a little while later, I found I couldn’t do it. My hands which had, before, carefully selected ornaments and hung them on branches just-so felt heavy. The giddy joy in my chest was replaced with a hollow numbness. All of a sudden, everything felt like some sort of play, and I could no longer play my part.

My father was prone to violent outbursts that could be unpredictable, yet were also cyclical and tended to crop up around holidays and special events. On my fifth birthday, for example, he and my mother were having an argument when he grabbed my arm and told me in a fierce voice that we couldn’t go to the beach that day because he and my mother were getting a divorce. I immediately burst into tears and ran into my mother’s arms. There were many moments like this in my childhood that left their mark, seared into my memory by their emotional intensity. The pure fear I felt watching my father lose control at Christmas was one of those.

Shortly after the event, I lost all interest in our Christmas traditions. My mom and sister would break out the ornaments and invite me to join in, but I would decline and do something else instead. It was more than a non-interest. It was, at times, an open hostility to the traditions. I became a genuine Grinch. For a long time, I chalked this up to the rebelliousness of adolescence and a counter-cultural personality that tends to reject anything traditional or expected. But as the years went by, I found myself watching my family’s celebrations from the outside in, even as our family unit evolved, leaving my father, adding my stepfather, and eventually growing the offshoot of my sister’s family. It seemed that everyone had a positive association with Christmas but me.

During my adolescence, I started having episodes of depression, which only worsened after my family’s tumultuous breakup when I was 16. The loss of my father, the overwhelming stress of his exit, and a lifetime of traumatic memories blended with the arrival of young adulthood. College was one of the hardest times for me. All of a sudden, there were new intellectual and social demands, but mentally and emotionally, I was not okay. I carried in my body the memories and emotions of recent events and those long past. I didn’t know how to communicate what I was going through, so I cried a lot, slept through class, and felt sad and inadequate. I didn’t have the language of post-traumatic stress then, but it was certainly what I was experiencing.

As I got further from the traumatic event, my wall of ice towards Christmas started to thaw. I got my first Christmas tree living as an adult in Vermont. I sent out Christmas cards and started a tradition of baking granola for my friends and family. I managed to tell my mom that Christmas wasn’t always a happy time of year for me. But a full and earnest embrace of Christmas and all its traditions, not because you have to do them, but because you want to, didn’t arrive until this year. This year, I’m in my own apartment after two years of living at home, recovering from a mental health crisis and long COVID.

During my crisis, I lost a lot: my job, my apartment, my furniture, my clothes, my treasured journals, and my sense of self. I almost lost my life, twice. And I’m changed because of it. With intensive therapy and healing, I’ve come back from the brink and built a new life from the pieces of my old one. I’m slowly regaining my physical and cognitive abilities, and I have a lot to be grateful for. I appreciate the little things, like the fragrance of my Christmas tree, the warmth of holiday lights, the ornaments that are like old friends, reminding me of past years and past selves. The traditions that were once a source of hurt can reenter my life as a source of joy.

I have an ornament hanging on my tree that is a leaping porcelain bunny with “Baby’s First Christmas 1990” on it. A prior me would have scoffed at this, but now I treasure it. It connects me to my mom, my family, and the passage of time. I can imagine hanging it up year after year, and I find that I’m learning the value of traditions as I live them. They connect us to something constant even as life is all change and unpredictability. They are a reminder of who we are and where we’ve been, even if that is not all happiness and joy. We can take traditions and make them our own in these beautiful pieced-together lives of ours.

And we can honor that child who closed off to joy in order to protect herself. We can invite her in to have sugar cookies and tea, string lights and hang ornaments, give to others, and accept gifts in return. She can feel all the warmth and excitement that this holiday can be.

She’s enjoying Christmas this year. She hopes you are, too.