As a child, Christmas was the ultimate celebration. The feeling of overwhelming joy and anticipation. The enticing smells of gingerbread, peppermint, sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, hot cocoa, and buttered rum.

My mom went to great lengths decorating the house. Hand-stitched stockings, vintage glass ornaments, nativity scene, snow globes, garlands, and wreaths. Twinkling tinsel on the tree, along with blinking-colored lights. My dad also enjoyed his own form of decorating, building the elaborate train set which snaked around the tree.

Picking the perfect Christmas tree, which, in hindsight, was never perfect. We hauled the heavy, much-too-large tree into the house, where, once festively adorned, it took center stage in the cozy den. The warmth of the fireplace enveloped the holiday merriment and festivities.

Christmas was full of amazement. That is, before I learned I was adopted. Looking back now, I wonder, had I missed the warning signs?

More often than not, the red caboose got stuck in the fallen icicles that my dad had so carefully and painstakingly placed on the tree earlier in the day. The tree’s prickly pine needles scratched my arms, producing painful red welts on my wintery pale skin, an allergic reaction to pine.

I was not permitted in the den for any length of time, due to my allergies. I was banished into the living room, which was in front of the house, forever austere and cold. Except for me, no one spent time there at Christmas. The living room housed the shiny, sparkly, silver aluminum tree, complete with rotating color wheel, the heavy, faded curtains open to reveal to the neighbors the festive façade that was my Christmas.

Rather than spend Christmas Eve banished in the cold living room, I went outside to hear the silence and feel the cold snow on my face, my fingers frosted over from building the ragged snow man without the nose.

I returned inside and changed into my soft, well-washed flannel pajamas, complete with my fuzzy red socks. For a moment, I was allowed into the den. I sat in front of the crackling fire and draped my legs with grandma’s handmade quilt. The quilt was in its last days, ragged and torn, and smelled of cedar due to its storage throughout the year. Was I feeling the snuggly comfort of love, affection, and belonging? It seemed fleeting.

Where did my amazement of Christmas go?

At the age of twelve, I made a jarring discovery that dramatically changed the trajectory of my life: I was adopted. Upon discovering this, I was frozen in time, paralyzed with shock and shame. My memories of any “happy” moments were tossed out, along with my innocence. It was time for me to view everything with scrutiny, under a different lens.

The following Christmas, things remained the same on the outside, but were very different on the inside. My mom still painstakingly adorned the house, and my dad patiently assembled the train set, but that was nothing but a ritual to mask the lack of emotions and love. The glimmers of what I thought was love were a charade. The “true gift of Christmas” and all its amazement was gone. Perhaps it was never there.

I had fooled myself into believing I was part of my adopted family. It was all a joke to everyone but me. My relatives must have thought how ridiculous it was to pretend “she” was part of the family. Embarrassed and ashamed, I eventually disengaged; a great gift to all parties involved. I didn’t belong. 

Estranged from my adopted family and shunned by my birth family, I know full well that I will be alone. Even if there is an unexpected invitation from a friend to spend the holidays with them, I will decline. I would be spending hours on end listening to family stories, yet another family to which I do not belong. Remember when Billy got suspended? Remember when Aunt Eileen forgot to thaw the turkey? It would be the familiar, miserable sense of an alien in foreign territory, and I would only flee the evening as soon as possible.

I avoid any activity that may bring up the ugly, distorted scenes of past Christmases. Society tells me I should be grateful and take what I can get. I am lucky. Trauma teaches me that I am unloved and discarded. It’s been said you create your family. Does that include the way my adopted parents created theirs?

I crawl into my bed and wait for the holidays to pass. A never-ending dread. Santa Claus is dead.