Christmas looks different to me now, but I still see joy with eyes of a child

By David McElroy · December 24, 2018

I’ve always loved Christmas. I give credit to my mother for that. Even though she left us when I was young, she was around long enough to make my first five or six Christmases exciting and joyful.

Mother decorated in ways that seemed extravagant at the time. She played loud Christmas music on our big old stereo system and we would dance around the house and be silly. I learned to associate Christmas with joy and fun — and she always made sure I had fun toys waiting on Christmas morning.

When I was about 3 and a half years old — maybe the Christmas in this photo or maybe the one before it — I woke up while my parents were setting up all of our toys for the next morning. (I had one sister at the time and Mother was pregnant with the other sister.)

As they were concentrating on putting toys together and setting everything up — trying to be quiet about it — I stumbled out of my bed and came into the living room to see what was going on. As the story was told in future years, I stood there quietly watching from the shadows of the room before one of them finally noticed me.

One of them scooped me up — still half asleep and fighting to stay awake to see the wonders going on at the tree — and they rushed me back to bed, where I fell asleep again. The next morning, I didn’t remember anything about it — even though I had seen all my toys in the night.

That was the year I received the most prized toy of my childhood — an HO-scale electric model train set with a green Southern Railway steam engine and gleaming silver passenger cars which looked just like the ones in which we traveled all the time. As we moved from city to city over the years, I lost bits and pieces of that set, but I still have some of the cars — still functioning — and the engine has been replaced with one just like the original. (When the original stopped working, I took it apart to understand how it worked, but I didn’t know enough about electric motors to repair the broken one.)

As I grew up, the world got a lot more complicated. Our family fell apart. Even before it fell apart, I experienced things between my parents — ugly shouting matches that still live in my memory — which scared me. But through all the years — first growing up and then through the roller-coaster adult years — I’ve never lost the joy about Christmas that I learned in those first few years.

I still want to smell that pine tree. I still want to experience the magic of watching Christmas lights. I still want to spend the holiday with people I love. I still want to feel the transcendent joy of being with people I’m connected with in something bigger than myself.

On this Christmas, there will be no electric train under a tree. I won’t wear bright red Christmas clothes and dance around with my mother and sister. I won’t do any of those things this year.

But I remember them more powerfully than ever.

And I wish for every single one of you to experience the joy and happiness which I knew of Christmas then. And I pray that you will have the love and connection and happiness that I’m still looking to find again.

Merry Christmas to all — and special love to those who I hope to spend Christmas with in the future.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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