Christmas Bitter and Sweet

From Christmas 1973 - Christmas 1981, I suffered from unemployment, and from family scorn, resentment, ridicule, and insults. At Christmas time in 1977 and 1978, I was branded as a handicapped client in a workshop and as a nursing home resident. In the 1980s, I spent a lot of Christmases alone without any support from family or the mental health system. Christmas 1988, the state tried to make me go out from an institution to have a termination visit with my son. I was so upset that I didn't make it out of the hospital. Christmas 1989, I had some good time by playing "Scrooge" in an abridged version of "A Christmas Carol." The institution staff was in charge of the play, and patients and staff played the parts. Christmas 1994 I expected a male friend (not a boyfriend) to have Christmas dinner with me, but he never showed up. Christmas 1997, I acquired a job as a bell ringer at the Salvation Army, and I've worked for them every year up to the present. I attended a party at the house of my boss at Christmas 2003; I worked as a typist for a local newspaper. I played the piano, Christmas carols. From Christmas 2011 - 2013, I worked as a receptionist in a doctors' office. Christmas 2023, was my first time singing "Silent Night" with the organist at a shrine. Christmas 2024 I sang Silent Night again, singing solo on the first verse and then other female singers joining in with me on the other verses, the same as in 2023. I have bad memories of how my sister's husband attempted suicide in Dec. 1975, on a Friday night, and then my father didn't pick up my mother from work the following Monday. My mother was so upset with him that she told one of her co-workers, "There might be a New Year's Eve murder!" (on that Monday, Dec. 29, 1975, and two days later, there was a New Year's Eve murder in a doctor's home located in the next town over from where we lived; it was a botched robbery attempt that turned into murder of the doctor, his wife, and teenage son.) I was 19 going on 20 when my sister's husband attempted suicide, and my brother was 14. The doctor who was murdered had daughters that were around my age, and his son was my brother's age. My parents had to clean up the blood from the attempt, and my brother-in-law's 14 year old nephew was at the scene as well.
From Christmas 2015 - the present, I have felt happy that I work at an outdoor restaurant as a cleaner, from spring to early fall.
Joseph and Mary had a "bittersweet" Christmas too, with the joy of expecting and delivering baby Jesus, yet Mary had to travel heavily pregnant on a donkey, and I'm sure Joseph suffered great fatigue walking that long way, and there was the depression of having no room at the inn, yet wonderful Christmas presents from the three Kings were given to the Holy Family, and there was joyous, glorious singing by the Angels. We should all think of these things during the Christmas season.