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How do aspies/auties feel about holidays like christmas?

Sportster said:
I grew up as an only child and not allowed to have friends over, so that just added to the social difficulties that already come with being on the spectrum; I never had the opportunity to develop the ability to interact with children. Having a mother that should NOT have had children merely exacerbated the situation.
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Same here. Bring an only child doesn't help at all and my mother wasn't able to look after me much even though she was around then she destroyed her life with alcohol.
 
Regarding the maternal bones and not quite sure how to be around children, I have three and lack some of that maternal instinct. I did however learn what it was I was supposed to be doing by way of night school classes on child development and child psychology and researched ways in which I could help them with things they didn't understand, most of the time, me neither but we figured it out together.

Only when I understood how development works and milestones and language and so on could I forge a picture in my mind of the route; in terms of development, three healthy children would follow. Any big deviation from that anticipated route would be looked at and ways found to guide them back to what could be considered usual for that age and stage.
It's been the most difficult thing I've done to date but the most rewarding in terms of applying myself, focus, adapting, researching and what I consider to be achievement.
I'd have given exactly the same to a career if that had been what I'd chosen.

I was fascinated by how my children viewed their world and spent most of my time trying to see it from their point of view.
I didn't feel it or understand it but trusted the published research that showed it was likely they view this as this and that as something else and can fear this and will mimic that and so on. Using that information I could create the opportunities for them to learn and feel a buzz to watch what was supposed to be happening, happen.
Almost as if I could see the cogs turning in their minds and the information linking up and curiosity being triggered.
It was pretty amazing :)
 
Sportster said:
I grew up as an only child and not allowed to have friends over, so that just added to the social difficulties that already come with being on the spectrum
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I have one younger sister (NT) and was allowed to have friends over, just that I didn't really have any to ask.
 
I love christmas! I only get to see my parents and sister a couple of times a year now, and christmas is the only time we all spend time together. My family is very small (only me, sis, brother in law, parents and 1 surviving gramp now) so it's very relaxed. Christmas dinner is fab and cooking it all is fun, if it's a nice day we go out on the boat while the turkeys in the oven, exchanging gifts is always nice, and my favourite part - stockings! We still open our stockings in the parents bed first thing in the morning (brother in law joins us now, it's fun all trying to fit onto the bed since he's 6"8), and that means chocolate for breakfast! Aw I'm all excited for christmas now... it's still summer!
 
It's a love hate thing for me. I despise Christmas music and commercializton, because my Mum also used to hate it. Winter is usually the toughest time for me mentally (triggers my sad), I like to think of holidays as a nice distraction from that.
 
xudo said:
I talk to all children in the exact same way as I would talk to an adult. Apparently that's not "normal" but I obviously don't know how to be any other way.
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That's probably no bad thing. At least you don't say to them "Haven't you grown!" presumably.

Getting back to the topic, when I've been unemployed (as I have been for all but two Christmases since May 2009) I've found myself missing office Christmas dos much more than I expected I would. In 2010 I was fired on 16 December, which as it happens was the day before the Christmas party, and I still went along, reckoning that I might as well as I'd paid up, bought my contribution to the Secret Santa and so forth. Looking back now, it seems that the enormity of what had happened had hardly begun to sink in (two dismissals in two years - and that was before I discovered that I was also ineligible for benefits).

The actual festivities are OK for me. I don't usually have to deal with any relatives outside the immediate family. I do often feel sad in the run-up to the big day, as I find myself reflecting on how little I've achieved in the past year. The worst aspect are the newsletters my parents receive along with Christmas cards, where it seems that everyone else's grown-up children have long since moved away from home for good and forged successful careers and produced grandchildren.
 
you know I lkie christmas, time with close family giving and getting presents this special evening on christmas eve, BUT GOING TO MY GRANDMA is like a nightmare, especially when you must wish everybody "merry christmas" or something and do nothing by 2 Hours. In conclusion christmas are good but only with beloved ones.;)
 
I love celebrating christmas with my close ones but i cant stand the chaos in the stores and pretty much any public place... I always try to stock up early... Already got all my christmas pressies done to beat the extremely slow holiday postage.
But yeah i always dread the normal food shop around the holidays... Empty shelves, terrible drivers, crowded people breathing in my clean air...just yuck yuck
 
had to go Christmas Eve last year glad I haven't gone days before people were fighting over a turkey! I barely got the energy to get out of bed how does somebody have the energy to fight about a Turkey
I hoped I could have got it delivered but no I had to go to Sainsbury's 24th of December.
got to stop hands hurting
 
I always do christmas week food shopping online weeks before, order confirmed as soon as the delivery slots open! Saves a lot of stress. No worrying about whether the shops will run out of turkey or chestnuts.
 
I have to share one Christmas memory...In the run-up to Christmas a year after I'd attempted a disastrous Erasmus exchange in Stockholm (see earlier thread) I found myself humming the tune of the Swedish carol Jul, jul, strålande jul. At first thought it seemed odd that I should feel any nostalgia towards what was overall such a negative experience. But then again, perhaps I was remembering a certain brief period when I was feeling uplifted by the thought that I would soon be leaving Stockholm - this being just before I discovered that as I'd failed all my exams I would not be able to return to my home university for the second half of the academic year. Either that or the said carol is just a haunting tune. Who knows?
 
Enjoyed it as a kid and young adult before the commercialism became Frankenstein. Gifting became a burden and I got fed up being at the bottom of the family hierarchy.

Took off to Japan in '96 and winter Chrissy was a shock.

2001, I returned to Oz for Chrissy....the sensory overload and Frankenstein was so bad I wanted to go back to Korea and its dismal winter. Moreover, I was once again sidelined by my siblings. It was the last time I 'celebrated' it with family.

Now I don't do anything except go to church. Otherwise it's a normal winter day, another day counting down to the day I can nick off to Singapore or elsewhere warm.
 
I used to love Christmas as a child, but only because I hated school and because I looked forward to receiving presents. As an adult I don't really celebrate Christmas or any other holidays and I don't look forward to it. I also don't like the build up where shops are busy, people are rushing about, there's lots of extra drinking / drunks Etc. + noise and then the Christmas period itself is kind of depressing as you are told that you should be enjoying yourself when you just aren't and I also don't like the change of routine (a common aspie trait), although I've have got used to it more over the years.

Regarding going away, I've booked to go away in the past (not at Christmas) and the sheer anxiety of thinking about going has caused me to cancel making me feel awful knowing that I let aspergers win and worse that I've let people down, but on other occasions in the past where I've forced myself to go things got a lot better once I've actually started travelling to the destination and later I have been really glad I plucked up the courage.
 
I don't enjoy the strange traditions that holidays entail: dressing up as monsters, hanging bulbs from trees, flirtatious card-giving, the alchemical transformation of teeth into currency, or pretending that a rabbit has defecated some chocolate eggs that children are eager to consume. How bizarre!

The previous paragraph was made for funniness. Verily, I find melancholy beautiful and fear that these holidays are getting too smarmy.
 
I love Christmas, as it's the only time of the year I get to see some members of my extended family. But I also feel sad whenever we argue on Christmas as we usually try to get along on that day.
 
I don't celebrate Christmas, per sé, it's just that coincidentally a few of our family holidays coincide around and on Christmas, so we have a big family dinner with me and my mom preparing food for a few days in advance, then everyone eating leftovers for a week. My parents are abroad this winter, so for the first time ever I won't be doing anything on Christmas, unless I plan something myself. Christmas presents were never a thing in our family, but that's mostly because Christmas isn't traditionally celebrated the commercial way here in the Netherlands.
Plus, we have our St Nicholas celebrations on the 5th of December, with presents. Which we stopped celebrating as a family when my sister and I moved out of the house.
 
To be completely honest... I like getting presents!XD

Now if I lived away from my family and it was one of the few times we gathered, that would be the most meaningful part for me.

My family was pentecostal turned messianic (not me anymore) so while we celebrate Christmas, we don't celebrate it as the literal day of Jesus's birth.
 
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