When you just can't shake it

From an old article in Science Daily, on why negative memories are so hard to shake.

The researchers used mice as the model system because their learning processes are very similar to those in humans, and established behavioural tests already exist. In their experiments, the researchers conditioned the mice to associate a sugar solution with nausea. This association persists for many months. The mice avoid the sugar solution during this period.

However, their aversion can be overcome slowly through intensive training. Mansuy explains that “Emotional memories are not simply erased. Oppressive negative memories need to be actively replaced by positive memories.” 

Which relates to Christmas.  Yes, in August.

Way back when I was a middle-youth sprogling Nanny married Husband #2.  Before then Christmas was a Big Deal.  We always went all out:  A big tree with a carefully collected ornament collection that went back generations, a big family dinner with all the trimmings passed politely around, dozens of cookies, piles of gifts, family games, Baby Boomer holiday music, movies, family stories told around, the works.

And then Husband #2 came along and it all stopped.  No, It.  All.  Stopped.  At first he wanted to do away with Christmas entirely.  Christmas was for going to church, he said, kids get one gift on the Epiphany, that's it.  But then he condescended to taking us to his family for the holiday, if we did it his way.

Of course it started well before.  No more big tree, no more ornament collection.  A small, "designer" tree.  One color, two at most, glass balls and a garland and clear lights.  That's it.  No holiday music, he didn't like it.  No movies, he didn't like them.  One kind of cookie, the kind he liked with his alcohol.  And dinner at his father's house.

Picture a basement.  Low ceiling, dimly lit, smelling of fried fish.  Rickety benches around sheets of plywood over sawhorses for a table.  Courses are placed on big trays in the middle of the table, and people fight over the food.  Winner take all style.  The only decoration is a piece of tinsel someone stapled to the wall.  After it everyone either takes a nap or ignores you.  No gifts.  Not even a place to sit indoors.  Overlooked, ignored, no one cares.

After that holidays became a series of basement.  Except for the ones Husband #2 "hosted", meaning I got to cook for 36 people.  Everything else applied.

After Nanny divorced husband #2 we had one holiday at her family's house.  I was still ignored, but the food was better.  And then Kitty Cat came along and we spent a few years with her family, which was a study in anxiety and altitude sickness.  And then we moved up here and Kitty Cat started working every holiday.  After all, the overtime is great, and we don't have kids and Christmas is soooo commercial and....

Losing Christmas still bugs me.  About once a week or so.  Today was the day this week.

Damn it, this year I am putting my foot down.  It's not just the tree, or the gifts, or the dinner, it's the whole experience.  This year we are starting with Thanksgiving and doing the whole bit, from turkey to the Twelve days of Christmas.  Okay, twelve movie nights.  Whatever.  We're doing it.  And I will do it every year until my molecules rearrange.

I leave these meanderings with a virtual tour of the biggest Christmas store in the US.  If I had any reason to go to Michigan I would visit.  I rather thing someone who spells it CHRISTmas might be shocked at my happy, rainbow ass walking into his place but I'd go anyway and I'd bet he'd take my money. 

43 days of the apocalypse and counting.  Which might be contributing to this as well.  Fuck, I cannot wait for cool, crisp fall days and the promise of snow.