Spending Christmas Alone

The Christmas season is upon us and everyone is busy shopping, cooking and preparing for family and friends. There are gifts to buy, food to fix and Christmas cards to send out and receive with news of the year past and hopes for the year to come. Old friends call each other this one time of the year just to say hi and let you know they are thinking of you. Children return home with children of their own and families come together in love and celebration.

But what if you are one of many that spend Christmas alone. Sometimes it is by choice and sometimes you just find yourself alone. No friends, no family to celebrate with. Widows without family, single parents whose children are with the other spouse and many who just live to far away from family to visit during the holidays. It is a lonely time when depression can set in and make everything seem so much worse than it really is. Others choose to avoid the holiday altogether because of losing a child to death making this season one of the hardest times a person must survive.

There are other options to spending the holidays alone besides sadness and depression. You can survive this time of year no matter what has happened if you chose too, but it is hard work. The following suggestions are to help you fight your way into the new year without constant tears and anger. Without feeling you would just like to give up on life. It is for hope and happiness you must learn to control your own thoughts with an inner strength each and every person has.

If you having a hard time not crying or if you can't even find the strength to get out of bed then go to the doctor and get some medical help for the depression. The medicine will not cure you, but it will give you enough of yourself back to find solutions and follow through with them. It is hard and will take practice every moment of the day. But it will take you on a journey from your own heartache to a calm kind of peace so you won't dread the holiday season so much as the years go by.

The first thing you are going to learn is how to adjust your own attitude. You may think you can't do this but the human spirit can over come many things if you just use the back bone God gave you. Stop thinking of "Merry Christmas" from other people as a personal attack on you! They have the right to happiness too and it is a normal reaction to this time of year. Just say thank you and think no more about it.

Force your thoughts away from the past. It is over for now. After the first of the year if you want to think about it all and be depressed that's fine, but you aren't going to relive the past until then. Find a common thought that will take you from Christmas and everything about it that's making you feel bad. Think about a new car. Memorize everything about it. What color would you like? What style? Where would you go and how much would it cost you in gas, food and lodging? Keep focused on this fantasy and away from other thoughts that are not beneficial.

Make a plan for Christmas day. Do not decorate and do not have any holiday foods in the house. Get up early, exercise and make a cup of coffee or cocoa or tea. Sit down and plan your day.

1. Clean out every cupboard in the kitchen on at a time. Take everything down and wipe the shelf clean. Dust every dish before you put it back and repeat with every shelf you have.

2. Clean all the closest in your home. Throw out anything you don't need, want or like. Think about buying a few new things to fill out your wardrobe. Too many shoes? Give them away and start thinking about summer shoes and nail polish.

3. Have library books available to learn basic Spanish, French, Japanese or any other language. Spend the day learning all you can and naming everything in the house in the language you are learning.

4. Put on loud rock music and dance, clean, do laundry or anything that doesn't have to do with Christmas.

The sounds are distracting and you can sing as loud as you like to help bring your mood up.

5. Get a steamy romance novel or scary suspense novel and spend the day reading.

6. Rent movies with action, comedy or suspense. Do NOT rent romantic, holiday or sad movies. The purpose of the movies is entertainment.

7. When you are ready to eat make a hamburger. Don't eat turkey, ham or anything else that has to do with the holidays. Spend time making a chocolate cake from scratch for something sweet. Drink strong coffee with your cake while you think about what to make for dinner and that new car!

8. Make a list for the year to come. Break it down into months and weeks. Set goals for jobs, car, classes for self improvement, writing your first novel. For each goal list how to work your way toward it and how much it will cost. You'll find out you may be a lot closer than you think to making a dream a reality.

Don't give up. If you have a moment of sadness then let it pass and go on. Just because you feel bad for a few minutes doesn't mean you give up the rest of the day to your depression. It's one of the hardest things you will do, but you'll be a happier person for it in the end. You can't live by what could have been or should have been. You have to leave the past behind even if it is one thought at a time. It will take practice and it won't be easy, but with each bad thought you'll learn to replace with a different thought and eventually you'll learn to survive and not feel guilty for being happy