My friends, today I want to share the stories of some of my Christmases in the past and my holiday seasons, which I hope will be useful for you. This topic was specifically requested in my Discord, so I hope that talking about my experience both in the sad, sorrowful holidays and in the happy, fulfilled ones, and everything in between, will help you. I know some of you out there are feeling alone and feeling lonely. This holiday season is bringing up feelings of shame and guilt and sadness and remorse, and ultimately wishing things were different. And I swear it's designed that way. Who actually gets a picture of everything you'd think a perfect holiday season would involve?
Mine is pretty close at the moment, and yet, on Thanksgiving, even though my life from the outside would look like a picturesque commercial or a Hallmark card, I still felt sad most of the day. Even though my mother was there, my wife and kids and family were there, and it was all fantastic, I'm looking outside and yet I felt sad most of the day. So I swear the holidays are a time to dredge up sadness and review your life at the very same time you experience the joy of being around people you love. You are in good company. You are in good company if you're feeling sad and you're wishing things were different.
Wishing Things Were Different Keeps You Stuck
What helps a lot is to not wish things were different. If you're wishing things were different, you're stuck in the past, and being stuck in the past, especially during the holiday season, really stinks. You're wishing things were different, you're looking at how things are now, and you're criticizing them and tearing them down, and that makes it difficult.
For example, Christmas 2013 was like that for me. My dad was dying, it was his last Christmas, and all I felt was so much sadness that this was going to be my dad's last Christmas. I felt like it shouldn't be this way, and I felt like I really needed some relief from all these bad feelings. I remember being very stressed out and irritable, even though my wife was there, my mother was there, my brother was there, even though I had lots of love around me. I brought all these feelings with me, and they all came up, and I felt out of control. I went into this outrage and argument and argued with everybody in the family, demanding that we go get the Christmas tree and set it up, even though my dad was feeling very poorly. He didn't want to drive with me and open up the storage locker and get it out. I just complained until we finally got it out, and I set it all up, and it was a rough Christmas.
And yet, I look back today and I see that I did a lot to make it rough. What I brought to things is what really made it rough. Maybe not at the time, but I now have the capacity to accept things the way they are, to accept that feelings are part of the human experience, and to accept things as they come.
You Have Control Over the Story You Tell
There's a particular viewer who was talking about how they're not going to be able to see their kids for Christmas. They're splitting up with their partner, and they're really sad about it. And yes, that sounds sad to me. At the same time, you have complete control over the story you tell. When I told the story that this really sucks for me, that my dad's dying, it's not fair, it's so sad, things shouldn't be like this, I felt bad. And when I today choose to tell the story that I'm very happy for the people who are here this Christmas, that I'm very happy for the chance to help others and to share my experience, that my painful memories are a tool I can use to relate to and help somebody else today, that I'm very happy with the people around me and the love I have in my life, it makes all the difference.
One thing that really helps to get out of this pain and this selfishness, really, is to go find somebody else to help. In my experience, I consistently feel better after I do my livestream, and after I create something and put it online, because I've done it with the intention to help somebody feel better. I also relentlessly focus on what I can do with what I've got today, and how I can help someone else feel better today, and what kind of future I'm creating.
I repeat this over and over to people, because it seems the main thing people around me are struggling with is being stuck in the past, fighting with the past and the present, and not putting hardly any attention on the question of what kind of future they want to create. When you keep operating that way, you keep creating the same future that you're so pissed off about right now. I talk to people and they say, well, this happened, and that happened, and this was painful, and this was embarrassing. And I say, what kind of future do you want? What can you do? How can you use what you've been through to help somebody else? Sometimes you might have to stop yourself 50 or 100 times a day and redirect your thoughts. I think almost exclusively about what I can do today with what I've got, and what I want to create.
One viewer put it perfectly: we always use the holidays as a feel-good, feel-bad time of the year, and it ain't about us. Exactly. So if you're missing family and you're feeling alone, then go help someone else, someone who's feeling the same way. And if you don't know where to find someone else, then pray, then set an intention, then open your ears and listen to what people around you are saying, and be ready to help. By helping, I don't mean you need to go out and change somebody, but just show up and be there for someone else.
Suffering Is an Opportunity to Help Someone Else
For example, let's say in some parallel universe, Laura had gotten tired of me and taken the kids and left, and I decided to move to another state or something. I know what I'd be doing. I'd be looking for another woman to keep me company and whom I could keep company. I'd be looking for alcoholics to help them get through the holidays. I'd be out there doing yoga. I would be looking for other people to spend time with and to connect with, and to have a nice holiday season together. I have a friend who doesn't have her family around for the holidays, and she has several of her single friends, and they all get a house together and have beautiful holidays together. If I went somewhere, or was somewhere, where I couldn't spend the season with a woman, I'd find a group of guys to have a house with and play video games and hang out and watch movies and go to yoga, and go to AA meetings.
The meaning of our suffering in life is an opportunity to go help someone else. One of the basic ways we get misled is to feel shame and guilt and remorse, and to keep criticizing the stories we have in our head, instead of using the opportunity to go out and find somebody who could use our help. If this is resonating with you and you want a place to do exactly that, alongside people working on the same thing, you're welcome to join the Jerry Banfield Family and be part of the community.
On Presents and Too Much Stuff
Someone in the chat asked, do you do presents under the tree? In this culture where we've got Amazon and we have storage lockers full of stuff, in this culture of too much stuff, I prefer and try to avoid buying anybody presents. I told my wife, you want something? Here's an Amazon gift card. Now send me some money on Zelle for that Amazon gift card, and you can buy yourself whatever you want. And if you'd like me to buy something for you, just tell me what it is. I personally can't stand buying anybody presents right now.
I did buy my mom a necklace. That's the only gift I think I've bought anyone this year. Given how many necklaces my mom already has, I probably wouldn't buy her another one. So I don't find any joy in buying anyone a present unless I feel moved to buy one. I felt moved to buy my mother that necklace, and if I don't feel moved, I don't buy anything, especially after taking so much of my mom's stuff to the landfill.
My kids get so many presents. My wife buys them lots of presents, my mother buys them lots of presents, my wife's family buys them presents. My kids have a ton of presents for Christmas. I advocate for opening them up as soon as possible so there's not a ton of crap to open on Christmas Day. No, I do not buy my kids a gift for Christmas at all, because they have enough gifts. I feel no joy and no desire to buy them anything else. When you consider the presents my wife's bought, my mother's bought, and my wife's mother's bought, the kids have more gifts than they need for Christmas. They have more toys than they can even play with. If anything, they have too much, and we're consistently trying to get rid of stuff. I used to buy a lot more presents, not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I should, or like I had to. Now I don't buy anything unless I feel like I really, really want to and I'd love to.
Someone asked, I hear you say you give homeless people $20; could you use that to give them gifts as children for Christmas? Yeah, if I run into a homeless person and they ask me for money, I'll generally give them $20, or if I know they're homeless and they've asked me for money a lot in the past, I'll just hand them $20 proactively.
The Places You Go Shape What Happens to You
I find that the places I go and the things I do are often heavily related to the things that happen. So I don't go to bars. I'm sober eight and a half years, because when I went to bars, lots of stupid things used to happen. I don't go to bars and I don't drink, because bars are places where crappy things happen. That's why I stay out of the bars. I stay out of places where people mistreat each other, and I don't keep people around in my life who talk junk anymore. My wife does tease a lot and is very sarcastic, so I guess I make the biggest exception for my wife.
My wife's character is so fantastic that she kind of needs to have some small character defect, so to speak, or something weird is going to happen. Someone asked me how I could give a homeless guy twenty dollars but not give my kids a gift for Christmas. Here is the thing: my kids don't need a gift from me for Christmas. Now, if my kids weren't getting gifts from anybody else, I'm sure I would feel moved to buy them something. And if my wife didn't buy them any presents, I probably would feel moved to buy them something. But since my wife, my mother, and my wife's mother handle all the presents for the kids and for each other, I don't do anything. And my wife has everything she needs.
She jokes that I don't buy her jewelry, but I tell her I'll go buy her jewelry. I'll be happy to go buy her jewelry. I don't feel any desire to buy her jewelry, but if she wanted some, I'd go drop a grand or several thousand on something nice for her. I would be happy to do that. Do you want me to do that for you? She says no. And I say good, well, let's not do it then. My wife already has one nice wedding ring, an engagement ring she wears that she got from her mother that means a lot to her. I used to buy my wife jewelry in the past, and she's got enough jewelry now. But if I ever feel moved to buy her a certain piece of jewelry, I will buy it.
Someone asked if the kids go to grandma's on Christmas morning. I imagine my kids will have Christmas at my house, Christmas at my mom's house, and Christmas at my wife's sister's house.
Letting go of the pressure to consume
I've felt relief from a lot of these societal pressures. I've come to believe a lot of these holidays are merely excuses to promote consumerism. And I take pride in using things like this iPhone. Look at it — it's an iPhone 8 Plus. I'm proud that I've had this iPhone for more than five years, and I'm trying to keep it going as long as possible.
In the past, I gave a bunch of my family Jerry Banfield gaming shirts. When I first started my business online in 2011, everybody got Jerry Banfield shirts for Christmas. My mother actually whipped one out the other day that was still in the plastic. I said, wow, that's still smokeable. I did some live streams with my wife on YouTube, so you can go on my YouTube channel and look at the Jerry and Laura Banfield gaming videos together, and you can decide for yourself how she looks.
Sadness is a normal part of life
I'm grateful that, after a lot of holiday seasons filled with sadness and loneliness, and lots of holiday seasons filled with joy and connection, I see that I have choices. I have choices in my life about how I process things. And you know what? Sometimes things are going to be sad, and that's okay. That sadness is a normal part of life. That sadness actually makes for a more interesting experience.
If you look at something like a rainbow, imagine the rainbow if it just had one color. If the rainbow just had one color, you wouldn't even know that there were other colors. We go through our life and look at our feelings and think, I want to get rid of this disgusting feeling of sadness, please make it go away. But here's the thing: if you could get rid of all those other feelings, life would be really bland with just one feeling, wouldn't it? So I'm much more accepting of that now.
Our culture conditions us, for some sick reason, to believe we should be happy all the time, and that if you're not happy all the time, there's something wrong with you and you should go see your doctor about that. And then your doctor will make a profit off your normal human feelings. And then you should go see your psychologist as well, and your psychologist will make a profit off your normal human feelings. Ironically, in my experience it can reinforce them, telling you things are wrong with you instead of saying, hey, you're having a normal human experience. A normal human experience includes being sad sometimes. A normal human experience includes feeling a little lost sometimes.
But what really takes the edge off is finding somebody else to help. Finding somebody else to help takes the edge off. It's about taking the focus out of the past and out of what's wrong with today, and putting it into the question: what kind of experience do you want to have? I would love to enjoy a connected, happy, and joyous Christmas with my family.
Getting perspective when the holidays get hard
Last Christmas we had a very nice day together. The Christmas before that, I showed my daughter her Christmas presents the night before Santa was supposed to come. My wife and I had a fight over it, and Christmas morning was tense. I called my mother — this was before she lived next door — and I said, Mom, I'm really mad at my wife and I don't want to be. I know I love my wife and I want to remember that I love my wife. I don't want to be mad at her. My mom told me about her Christmas, and that was really helpful for me to get some perspective. So if you're struggling more than usual on Christmas, try hearing what other people are going through.
What I love about Alcoholics Anonymous, and generally about twelve-step programs, is getting to hear what other people are going through. If you have an alcoholic friend or family member, or a spouse, or child, or parent, you can go to Al-Anon. If you are a child of an alcoholic, you can go to ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. If you're an alcoholic, you can go to AA. If you're a drug addict, you can go to Narcotics Anonymous. If you overeat, you can go to Overeaters Anonymous. And if you don't feel like you fit into a twelve-step program, if you don't know where to go to help somebody, just pray that you can see the opportunities in front of you.
I would appreciate each of you helping me know what to talk about and what to play. If you want me to talk about a specific topic or play a specific game, one of the best things you can do is join the Jerry Banfield Family and let me know — hey Jerry, I'd like you to play this, or I'd like you to talk about this. That really helps me.
The book I'm afraid to write
I'm thinking of writing a book now. My idea for it is called I'm Black Now: My Transracial Experience, chronicling my whole story this year with changing my race and what I've learned. And yet the idea of writing the book kind of scares me too. It scares me, because honestly it's a book that I kind of don't want to write. I'd like to just move on. Haven't I done enough in that area? In some ways it'll be hard to write, and I can imagine all the criticism from it as well. And if I write the book, that'll take hours and hours away from my live stream.
Someone asked if that's why I don't buy gifts — because I can't keep the presents a secret. Yes, that could be part of it. I'm reading a book by a woman who was in the NAACP; her book is called In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World, by Rachel Dolezal. People compared my change to hers. Will my book be at Barnes and Noble? I don't know. I'm still deciding right now whether it would be worth my time or not, and whether it would be good for me and for people collectively.
Christmases past
Let me tell you about some other Christmases. There was a Christmas when I told my wife that we should move another woman in, and that I should have two wives. That was last Christmas. My mind was filled with this idea of how awesome it'd be to move another woman in and have two wives at the same time, and grow our family, because my wife doesn't want to have any more kids. So I thought, well, let's just move another woman in here.
What was amazing is that we had about three hours of upset. My wife cursed me out a little bit. For the sake of privacy, I'm not going to mention the specific woman I had in mind, but I did tell my wife who it was. Thankfully, she helped me see that, A, she wasn't interested in doing that, which I already knew, and more importantly, B, that it might not be as fun as I imagined it to be. There'd be a lot of downsides that I wasn't considering. Someone in the chat said, isn't one wife already too much? One wife is just right for me. The wife I have is just right for me.
That said, it might be fun to try having two wives — and it might be miserable to try having two wives too. I applaud myself for having the courage to bring that up, because it was something I had thought of for a long time. After bringing it up to my wife and hearing her opinion about it, it really killed the idea in my head. I'm hoping this year we can do without any of that.
Three years ago, we went and visited my mom right after Christmas, which was the first time I had ever taken my kids to visit my mother since they'd been born in 2015. It was a really magical trip. It went super smooth. It was a huge leap forward in my relationship with my mother. So that Christmas in 2019 was a really special Christmas. The challenge that year was that my wife was sick for Christmas and at the beginning of the trip to visit my mom. It really is simple having one wife.
I really appreciate the simplicity in my life. Around that time I watched some videos about people who had two wives, and I listened to a book where a woman had two husbands, and it just looked more complicated. I already have enough complication in my business that I really need the rest of my life to be pretty simple. So I've had mostly really nice holiday seasons. The two saddest ones I can remember were 2012 and 2013.
Two Sad Holiday Seasons
In 2012, I'd just gotten married, and I was really missing my family. By my family, I mean my mom and dad. I made the decision to have a drink with my wife's family when they came over for Christmas Eve, which resulted in me being like a crying, self-pity mess. Self-pity is when you feel sorry for yourself, and in my experience feeling sorry for yourself is usually enabled by not knowing what other people are going through, by not thinking about or considering what other people are going through. It's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you're aware of what a lot of other people are going through. When you're aware that other people are losing so many difficult things. Their first Christmas alone. Their first Christmas with their son having died. Their first Christmas with their parent having died. Their first Christmas with a new spouse and a new baby, which having a bunch of new things that we think of as good can be very stressful too.
I find it really helps me to be happy to have those uncomfortable conversations, because now I don't go around fantasizing about having two wives anymore. I'm aware that from my wife's point of view she's not interested in that, and it might not be better than what I've got now. It might be worse than what I have right now, and I certainly don't want anything worse than what I have right now.
So in 2012 I essentially chose self-pity. I chose to drink, which brings on more self-pity and depression. Same thing in 2013, although technically I was sober for Christmas. The day I left in 2013, my dad broke his arm just from waking up in the morning, because he was almost dead, had cancer, and had all kinds of disease in his body. His arm broke and I was like, sorry about that, I need to get home though. And I really didn't need to get home. I could have easily stayed a whole other day and helped my mom. But I needed to get home and drink. I needed to get out of that house as soon as possible.
Stop Arguing With the Past
Today I don't regret that either, because it was a valuable learning experience for me. If you want to stop arguing with the past, what helps me is to look at it as a valuable learning experience, and to start thinking about how I'm going to behave next time. If my mom has a fall, am I going to be there to help her? Or am I going to try and avoid it as much as possible? Our past decisions ideally help us figure out what kind of future we want to have.
So I hope you get this from it: if you catch your mind arguing with the past and debating the past, stop that. Think, how can I help somebody today? And what kind of life would I like to have in the future? By me thinking constantly about what I want to create and what kind of life I want to have in the future, I'm able to ask for and get other people's feedback. For example, when I'm thinking of writing a book, I ask you about the book and then I get your feedback. When I'm thinking about having two wives and I ask my wife and she doesn't think that's such a good idea, then I adjust what I want in the future. Because in an ideal scenario, we consider other people's wishes and desires alongside our own. We neither put our own desires away and just serve other people, nor do we put other people's desires away and ignore them and just think about ourselves. We balance consideration of what other people want versus what I want.
The Worst Gift I Ever Received
Someone asked what the worst gift I ever received was. One Christmas, I gave my mom a list of three video games I wanted. I wanted Call of Duty: World at War and two other video games on Xbox 360, and then I gave her a backup list of Christmas presents like rechargeable batteries and a couple of other things, in case she bought all the video games and still wasn't finished, then she could buy those. On Christmas, I opened up my rechargeable batteries and my couple of other backup gifts and I was looking around like, where the hell are the games, mom? I don't see Call of Duty: World at War anywhere. Where's Battlefield? I wanted Battlefield, where is it? And she's like, I thought this is what you wanted. And I'm like, no mom, this was the backup list. This was not the primary list. The primary list were the things I really wanted, and the backup list was for if you bought all the primary things and still wanted to buy more.
At the same time, she showered a ridiculous amount of gifts on my brother's girlfriend at the time. Tons of gifts on my brother's girlfriend, and I get rechargeable batteries and a couple other cheap things. I'm like, mom? So my mom took me to GameStop a couple of days later and bought all the video games I wanted.
Most recently, my wife gave me this nice Gap jacket. It's like a hundred-dollar jacket. When I opened it, she was all excited to give it to me, and she could clearly read how I felt. I was sad. And she's like, what? And I'm like, I already have a jacket. She's like, I know, that one's old and I thought you could use a new one. I'm like, I don't want a new one. I like the jacket I already have. This old Jacksonville Jaguars jacket. She gave me a jacket to replace a nearly 20-year-old Jacksonville Jaguars jacket that I've had since college. I've got a lot of memories in that jacket.
Who Is the Gift Really For?
Someone pointed out that I've said the reason I don't buy gifts for other people is because it doesn't bring me joy, and that the purpose is joy for the person you're buying the gift for. I trust that if another person really needs me to buy them a gift, I will feel inspired to buy the gift. There's not a separation between me getting excited about giving somebody a gift and them feeling joy in receiving it. My mother felt great joy in receiving the necklace I gave her, and I felt great joy in giving her that necklace. My wife has everything she needs. She doesn't need any gifts that I'm aware of.
It's just like with my wife buying me that jacket. She was frustrated with the jacket-buying situation, and so was I. She says sometimes other people's waste bothers her, and I'm like, you're wasteful. You bought me a jacket I didn't want and didn't need, and then you put me in the position where somehow I'm rude because you gave me something I didn't want, and now I have two jackets. Now you're expecting I should get rid of the jacket that I want. Now I'm stuck with a situation I didn't ask for. So I've made it clear: don't just buy me stuff. I don't want that. That's wasteful. Somebody took their time at work and made that jacket and I don't need it. I have a hoodie. I've got a raincoat. I've got the Jacksonville jacket. Now I have this other jacket that was a hundred dollars just pissed away, and somebody's time and energy to make it was pissed away too. Somebody else could have that jacket who maybe needed it.
My wife cried when I had that discussion with her. But it also was useful for her to see that sometimes we think we're doing things for other people, but we're not actually considering the other person. We're doing it for our own selfish reasons. In my wife's mind, she wanted me to get rid of that old jacket. So instead of talking to me about it, she bought me this new jacket with the expectation that I would get rid of the old one. From my point of view, what she did was inconsiderate. She did not clearly consider me at all when buying the gift. She bought a gift for me that was really for her, because she was tired of looking at that old jacket.
I've noticed a lot of our gift-buying is kind of selfish like that. We buy a gift for someone because we want attention. We buy a gift and tell ourselves it's for them and to make them happy, but really we buy the gift because we wish we would have gotten that gift ourselves. We buy that gift because we're lonely and sad and we want to go shopping. We buy that gift because we want the other person to change something in their life, and by giving them this gift we're going to force them to make a change. So this is why I'm very thoughtful with my gift-buying now. Because we live in a consumer culture that pushes buying things all the time, I try to avoid buying things.
Someone commented that the person who made that jacket was a seven-year-old boy in China. I think about that. The way I look at it, if things were made in China, it's kind of slave labor in my mind, because of the wages they get paid and because they're living in an authoritarian government where their freedom is very restricted, often working very long hours.
My wife definitely does not need a gift. Me being around and me being considerate is the biggest gift she could get. So I try to avoid buying physical things. I've found that for me, my area of irrational spending often comes into play with my business. And yes, I did dump about three grand of loss into Gods Unchained. That was a good lesson for me.
Learning To Spend Smarter
I am usually hesitant to buy physical things, but when it comes to digital stuff I've been more willing to spend, and honestly to waste, my money there. I am learning, though. I've blown hundreds of thousands of dollars unnecessarily in my business online after making millions of dollars, and the amount that I blow now is a lot smaller. So my financial decisions are definitely getting better.
Getting out of God's Unchained, at least in the short term, put seven or eight thousand dollars back in my bank account. In the long term, I might have been able to sell my cards for fifty or a hundred thousand. They still might be worth that someday. When I first got into God's Unchained, it looked like the cards might be a great long-term investment, and they still might be. But at this point I'd rather just pay my debt down than sit here holding God's Unchained cards. I ended up taking about a three grand loss on God's Unchained, and for where I am right now, I'm at peace with that.
Wrapping Up And Staying Connected
I think we've wrapped the Christmas discussion up, so let's end there and maybe transition into a different topic. If you're reading this, we originally did this live, and I'd genuinely love to stay connected with you beyond one stream. In my experience, the best way to keep the conversation going and actually work through this stuff together is to join the Jerry Banfield Family.
A lot of these conversations also live on in my Life playlist, and I share the same stories on my podcast, The Jerry Banfield Show, which finally got monetized. So thank you for listening on there. That way, if you ever miss one of the live streams, you can easily get caught right back up.