By Robert Dean
Carter County Times
“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel… I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess.”
I get Charlie Brown. I like Christmas because I like celebrating throughout the month with my kids and my girlfriend. I like snuggling up and watching Elf and because I’m 44, I am a Clark Griswold quote machine. But even though there is a lot to celebrate this year, I don’t know why I can’t shake this feeling of emptiness inside. I had a career year. I did things as a writer that 23-year-old me would’ve flipped his wig over, including writing for this column week in and week out. In 2025, I sat in a café, located in an art gallery in Dublin, Ireland and worked on this column. I found out my first piece with VICE was going live while in Barcelona, Spain – I have nothing to complain about.
Maybe it’s the pressure itself. Every end-of-year list, every Instagram story, every card in the mail is selling a version of happiness I’m supposed to feel. The “best life” machinery runs 24/7 in December. My feelings don’t care about my resume or what I accomplished this year.
But the emptiness persists. I don’t know why I am always reflective at the end of the year, maybe it’s that another year is in the books, another one I’ll never get back. I think about my friends that are gone, my grandparents, about family I’d love to talk to now that I’m older. I think about Christmas’s of the past but view them through a weird lens where they feel better than I know they were in reality. I understand why people get sad around the holidays, it’s a beautiful time, but it’s also a complex one. My kids are happy and they’re healthy. My pets are sleeping in my bed, fat and pleased with themselves. When someone sits alone in that recliner, watching a television with their thoughts playing static, I get them. It’s hard to turn off how you feel when you should be so jazzed that this time of the year is meant to reflect on our successes, to feel like our best selves, to hoist drinks, and cheat on doctor’s orders.
Maybe I romanticize Christmas because I miss being young enough to believe the myth still worked. I miss not being cynical yet. Like Charlie Brown, Christmas feels complicated.
If you’re not feeling it this year, you’re not broken. You’re not ungrateful. You’re just being human, and the holidays are hard when you’re being present the best you can. Charlie Brown found his little tree and that gave him hope. Maybe I’ll find my little tree. Maybe you will, too.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
