Maybe This Is Christmas: A Reflection for the Ones Who Don’t Feel It

Audio Link: https://youtu.be/YWmuMu7_mps

Every year around this time, I feel the pressure rise.
Not just from the calendar or the crowded stores, but from something quieter—an expectation that I should be feeling more than I am.

Joy. Gratitude. Spirit.

And for a long time, I believed that was the goal. That if I just kept doing the work, healing, meditating, trying, I’d get there. I’d finally become the kind of person who loved the holidays.

But I didn’t. And now, I’m starting to think that’s not a failure. It might be the beginning of something more honest.

There are seasons I don’t return to. Thanksgiving through New Year. A gauntlet of expectation. Family, money, performance, ghosts. These months arrive like a script I never agreed to. I turn down the volume. I play along just enough to get through.

I spent decades trying to fix my resistance, as if the goal of healing was to finally enjoy December. To belong in the glow. To overflow with spirit. To become the kind of person who cries at carols and bakes cookies in wool socks.

But what if that was never the point? What if the real rebellion is to stop pretending you want to belong to a system that never made room for your ache? What if you’re not broken for feeling grief when others feel joy? What if presence isn’t about manufacturing peace, but making space for whatever stirs?

There is a difference between not being OK and believing you need to be fixed.

I’m not romanticizing sadness. I’m not making a home in the wound. But I am done chasing the spirit like it owes me something.

Maybe the real Christmas is not the one that wraps you in warmth, but the one that lets you sit still in the cold. And live.

I used to believe I’d get there. That healing meant arrival. That if I practiced enough, breathed enough, forgave enough, one year it would all click.

I’d wake up and feel it. The joy. The giving. The fullness. The elusive spirit that everyone said would find me once I was whole.

They told me it wasn’t Christmas until I could feel it in my chest. That if I wasn’t smiling, I wasn’t doing it right.

And I believed them. Even as the weight of years stacked quietly in my body. Even as the season replayed like an old wound. Divorce, debt, silence across the dinner table. Trying to keep the peace when there wasn’t any.

Mindfulness was supposed to be the cure. So I meditated my way into performance. I breathed like I was auditioning for calm. I did the work. I read the books. I lit the candles and called it healing.

But I was still waiting for something to land.

Now I think that belief—that someday I’d arrive—was just another trick. Another spiritual hustle dressed in good intentions.

And all the while, the season itself was being sold back to us: in ads, in traditions manufactured by marketing teams, in music that tells us what to feel, and movies that wrap every ache in a bow by the final scene.

It’s not just commercial. It’s a false narrative. One that doesn’t breed happier people, only quieter, sadder ones who wonder why they can’t match the mood.

This is where the holidays start to jump the shark. When the story stops reflecting real life and becomes a performance so absurd you either play along or feel like something’s wrong with you.

And still, we chase it. Because the alternative—telling the truth—feels even lonelier. Until it doesn’t. Until it becomes the only thing that actually feels like peace.

What I’ve learned—slowly, painfully, and only after years of pretending—is that performance never brings peace. Not the kind that holds.

You can string up lights and play the music and pass the potatoes with a smile, but if you’re faking your way through it, your body knows. The ache doesn’t care how well you hide it.

Authenticity isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself or demand recognition. It’s quiet. Unapologetic. It just is.

And the strange thing is, once I stopped trying to force the spirit, once I stopped chasing the high of joy and started telling the truth about what I actually felt, something shifted.

Not into bliss. Not into perfect peace. But into presence.

Into a kind of grounded acceptance that didn’t need to sparkle to be real.

That’s when the holidays started to feel… if not good, then honest. And that was better.

Because from honesty, something like peace can grow. Not the kind sold in commercials. But the kind that doesn’t flinch when the past shows up. The kind that makes room for both grief and gratitude at the same table.

Because maybe that’s the real gift.

Not joy on command. Not the illusion of peace. Not the story we’ve been sold.

But presence. Not the kind you wrap, but the kind you live through.

The kind that lets you be exactly where you are—even if where you are is uncertain, or undone, or still healing.

And here’s the thing I never expected. With that presence comes something quieter than happiness, but far more honest.

Not sadness. Not anger. Not disappointment.

Just me.

Unperformed. Unpolished. Authentic.

And in that, something like contentment. Something like comfort. Something like enough.

Maybe the holidays don’t need to be transformed. Maybe you don’t.

Maybe the true spirit isn’t something you catch. Maybe it’s something that comes when you stop trying to be someone else.

And maybe, just maybe, when you no longer need the holidays to save you, they finally start to feel real.

Maybe this is Christmas.

And if you read this and thought, “That’s sad,” maybe I didn’t explain myself clearly enough.

This isn’t about good or bad.
Not joy or sorrow.
Not discomfort or peace.

It’s about honesty.
It’s about living without a mask.

And if that truth unsettles you, maybe it’s not because it’s wrong—
but because it’s real.

Always remember to JUST BREATHE.

The Unscripted Mind.

If this landed, share it.
Let it spark a question in someone else.

Just Breathe, The Unscripted Mind website.