In this episode I try to provide some understanding of how and why so many people get depressed around Christmas time. I begin by noting that there are broad cultural and social issues here at stake, including the ways in which non-Christians can experience themselves as excluded and depressively relegated to the sidelines in a culture that, driven by the capitalist engine, literally floods us every day with commodities and the promise that if we purchase and consume these commodities we will be happy. However, my interest here is in exploring the internal interest psychic world in which people react to various parts of this holiday with depression and disappointment. And I argue that this is an expression of the ways that the child in us affects our adult emotional life. As children, we symbolically equate receiving gifts with receiving love, and this stimulates various narcissistic wishes for perfection that are doomed to be frustrated and disappointed. It is these moments of discrepancy between the longed for and fantasized gratification of our wish for perfect love and the reality that depression arises. While common, “Christmas depression” is by no means universal and my analysis in no way denies that some or even many people might avoid suffering and even enjoy this time of year. Still, the pressures and undercurrents of depression, disappointment, loss and envy are great enough to warrant discussion.
