Christmas; The double edged sword

Ah, Christmas time, The season for giving- Not just giving gifts but giving joy. The holiday season is a flurry of presents, relatives, snow, and songs- Its the time where families gather and play games, Where siblings argue over things that happened a decade ago and still proceed to sit down at family dinner as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats twenty minutes before.

Christmas is great!

Don’t get me wrong, My pajamas are a large array of Christmas patterns that I get every year and I start playing my Christmas jams playlist in October while decorating for Halloween. As an idea, I love the holidays- But as I’ve gotten older I’ve begun to really see it for the double-edged sword that it is.

As a young adult continuously struggling with my mental health, I’ve done my absolute best to find jobs that could accommodate my limits. Realistically, It isn’t as easy as some people may believe and that leads to unemployment and the hope of gaining disability.

If you’re like me and you enjoy buying gifts for the ones you love, This may be a bit of a struggle. By the time your local mall is stringing up Christmas lights and a questionable Santa is sitting in the middle, It’s already too late to get a job during the holiday season.

Sometimes you could get lucky and someone could be quitting right as you walk through the door to hand in your application. If you are one of those lucky people, I’d like to acknowledge the second biggest struggle other than finding a job during the holiday season; Having a job.

Christmas parties, Holiday parties- Of all shapes and sizes, Houses and buildings filled to the brim with red and green, Trimmed in silver and gold. These are events that you would very much like to attend and due to the fact that you have now gotten a seasonal job to afford presents for your loved ones; You cant even go to a Christmas party.

This is the seventh paragraph, So by now I’m sure I can get my point across when I say that getting a job for the holidays is a complete lose-lose situation. If you’re lucky enough to get a seasonal job to pay for the holidays, You then have absolutely no time to enjoy the holidays.

You spend the three months that you’re supposed to be surrounded by holiday cheer and festivities getting screamed at by strangers over things that you probably have no control over.

If you are one of the many unlucky folks who can’t snag a job at the last minute to pay for gifts, You’re relying on a credit card- Or worse your parent’s bank account- Both are equally as humiliating and leaves you with a sense of unfulfillment- But at least you get to go to a Christmas party, Heck you might even throw one.

Overall there is no real winning situation when it comes to the holiday season; The biggest fear is having to work on christmas- Which means you likely have to give up your Christmas eve, And if you’re ‘unlucky’ and you are unemployed during the holidays, You’ll be missing a chunk of your family while they sit in small offices and behind coffee counters and you sit on the couch counting the hours for them to come home.

In the end, Christmas is about spending time with your loved ones- It isn’t about the job you can score or the presents you could buy. If you’re lucky enough to spend even an hour with the ones you love during this holiday season, Count yourself as a winner.