Merry GenXmas!

The holiday cards are still in the box on the dining room. My decorations are a mishmash of unrelated, non-themed odds and ends, most of which my lovey and I threw about the house 2 nights ago. Christmas Eve dinner is going to be soup because I just don’t have the energy for anything more elaborate. Gifts are modest. I started my shopping at 9 p.m. tonight—December 23rd. I'm left wondering when Christmas changed from being the thing we LIVED for all year long, into the thing that makes us pull our hair out. Our childhood wonder became adulthood I-wonder-how-I'm-gonna-get-everything-done.

Thankfully I am not alone, as proven to me by Facebook. A quick scan over the past 24 hours revealed the following:

“Now I am going to have to pull an all- nighter to get everything wrapped…”

“Don't feel left out…nobody got cards from me this year. it's called burning the candle at both ends.”

These were followed by status chantings of, “I will not feel stressed, I will not feel stressed…”

Seems the 35-42 age bracket is feeling a little less jolly and more stressy this holiday season. Not that anyone’s surprised. Haven’t we all been a little more stressy for the past two years or so?


Gen X is still strongly attached to Christmas and the holiday spirit, clinging (of course) to the holiday icons of our youth. Raise your hand if you made sure to catch A Charlie Brown Christmas for the 30-somethingth time. (Several retailers are now selling sad little Charlie Brown Christmas trees; no doubt who the target audience is.) Many of my friends are making plans to go out for Chinese food to recreate the Fa ra ra ra ra incident from A Christmas Story. We want our holidays to be lighthearted, filled with laughter and friends, and a release from the stress of the year. We can’t stand that the holidays seem to ADD stress to our lives.

More and more we find ourselves rebelling against the expected traditions of the holidays, sometimes to the chagrin of the older generations in our families. But it’s not the day itself we’re rejecting, it’s the long-held expectations developed over decades of mass media influence, retail suggestion, and old-fashioned guilt.

Yesterday an acquaintance suggested to me to “throw out the "supposed tos/what ifs/what might they thinks"”… and I said hallelujah! Thank you for telling me plainly what my brain has been screaming at me all along. We should all celebrate as we wish, and not be afraid to do away with what doesn’t fit us. Celebrate for joy and thanksgiving, and reflect on all that is good in your life.


So whether you’re opting for Festivus and its feats of strength, a solemn midnight mass, a rousing family dinner, or simply 24 hours of A Christmas Story, I wish you peace in your home, joy in your heart, and friends at your side.

Reality: Still Biting

Several posts back I wrote about the competitive nature my fellow Gen X peers and I seem to have when comparing our financial woes (Bragonomics). It was written 3 months ago, and the incident that inspired it was 3 months prior to that.

Since then, I’ve seen a shift in the discussions among us. Continued economic downslides and family crises have lessened the novelty of the recession. It’s no longer a fascinating time in history that is affecting us for a short while; it is now some serious muck we’re mired in. We’ve shifted from gabbing about it over drinks to internalizing our stressors quietly, especially the effects they are having on us.

A few days ago the author of the site are you there god? it's me, generation X (http://www.jenx67.com/) wrote:

“Gen X is said to be the most neglected generation in American history. The experts say the Gen X childhood and teen years were marked by profound loneliness (all those cartoons, all that cereal), and followed by an even lonelier, more stressful adulthood (the worst recession in 75 years; booms and busts, and oh, BTW, how am I going to pay for my kids’ college education?) Of course, nobody will admit to being lonely or stressed on Twitter.”

JenX, let me profess loud and clear, I AM LONELY AND STRESSED.

And I know my friends are, too. I read it in their Facebook posts, even when they try to disguise it.

I try not to whine. I know everyone is going through multiple issues in their lives. Mine are no worse than theirs, but they are MINE. I have a stack of medical bills (even with insurance!), a job I’ve outgrown but can’t break free from, graduate school studies, two family members with serious health conditions, and a bank account that never seems to get out of the kiddy pool. My house is worth $30,000 less than what I owe on it. Likewise, my friends are facing unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, infertility, divorce, children with learning disabilities, parents with Alzheimer’s, cancer.... Some of them are dealing with 3 or 4 of these things all at once. For all our efforts to be responsible, productive adults, we’re feeling like the punching bag generation.

Gen X-ers still have a strong sense of self reliance despite what older generations might say. We want to make it on our own, to be successful and comfortable through our efforts. But unlike our parents and grandparents, our sense of pride is different. We’re not above admitting when we’re on a losing streak. But at the same time, we don’t want to appear weak, as if we can’t handle what life throws at us.

We want to lean on each other, but we don’t want to be a burden, even emotionally. We want to encourage our friends when they’re dejected, but some days we can barely hold up our own heads up. It’s hard to inspire others when you’ve lost your own faith. But we hope for and rejoice in bits of good news in anyone’s life as it gives us a glimmer of hope that something in this world is going to turn for the better.

Not Alone, But Still Lonely
I have a loving husband and wonderful friends whom I can count on for levity. My Facebook page is a portal across the miles to friends past and present. Thank goodness for those daily doses of baby pictures and corny jokes. They divert me from my stress for brief moments. Yet, I feel lonely.

I’m lonely for a time and place where my paycheck was more than enough.
I’m lonely for friends who are always in a good mood because their lives are all falling into place.
I’m lonely for friends whose eyes don’t well up when I ask how everything is going, even though they say “pretty good.”
I’m lonely for the babies my friends realize they will never have.

I don’t have the answers yet. I don’t know how we’re going to get through all this. I know we will, because we’re resilient. But in the moment we’re mentally bruised, and tired, and struggling.

What are you lonely for?