Okay team… how long did you last?
It took until yesterday afternoon for me to break this year. It happened in a supermarket carpark of all places. I’d driven the 8 minute drive, head spinning, fighting nausea and Storm Gerrit which buffeted the me from all angles, threatening to push my tiny VW Up off the road. All I wanted were some bagels. After two days of no food, all I could imagine eating was a damn bagel. Toasted. Plain. Comforting. Only the supermarket, finally open after two days of public holidays, was all but bare. No bagels. Not even a loaf of shitty sliced bread. Just endless piles of mince pies on special offer.
I plodded back to my car in the driving rain, climbed in and burst into tears. This, despite much planning and fanfare, was turning into a spectacularly shitty Christmas. I was supposed to be with my boyfriend and his family. After several years of loneliness since the death of my mother (the rest of my family is ‘complicated’ - but this is a topic for another time. Or perhaps never) this was going to be THE YEAR. I was lucky enough in 2023 to meet a kind, charming and handsome man with a child-like enthusiasm for Christmas, who seemed to like me almost as much. He’d held me tight and told me I wouldn’t feel lonely at Christmas again.
We’d been planning for weeks. I would spend the festive period with him, his parents and his children luxuriating in the family Christmas I have always dreamed of. I’d pop home on Christmas Day to make lunch for my father (who doesn’t ‘do’ Christmas, but who I will never abandon), before returning for days of merriment and revelry! Hurrah!
On the drive home on Christmas morning, radio blaring, Chris Rea keeping me company, the nausea started. I shrugged it off - too much coffee perhaps, or not enough sleep. By the time I’d cooked a roast lunch I had little appetite - but sometimes I get like that when I cook. No matter. My father doesn’t eat a huge amount so do the dog did well out of us. We had a nice time and mid-afternoon he left to go home and I slumped to the sofa. That’s when things got bad. Norovirus. The winter vomiting bug. The gift Santa brings you if you’ve been naughty. The kind of sickness that leaves you gasping for breath.
The next couple of days were a blur spent either asleep or shivering in my bathroom. There was no way I could handle the three hour drive back to my magical Christmas. And so I stayed. Alone again. Watching the hours tick by as I missed for of the things we’d planned. Missing my mother so painfully I cried out for her or saw her in fevered dreams.
I held it together for as long as I could - but the empty bagel shelf was too much. I resigned myself to the traditional Christmas cry.
The Christmas cry
Because, as sad as I felt, there is something oh-so-familiar about weeping at this time of year. The stakes are just too high - there is too much pressure to do things right and feel a certain way. The build up is too intense, the advertising too aggressive. Your house and food must be perfect, you must feel a sense of unending joy and wonder. You must see everyone you love. You must see everyone you don’t love but happen to be related to. You must eat until you pass out, in the knowledge that come January 1st you’ll be told to drink nothing but green juice and coconut water and be fit again. You must, you must, you must.
At the same time, you must battle ghosts wherever you go. Christmas is traditionally a time for ghost stories - and I can’t help wondering if that’s because we are all inevitably visited at this time of year by our ghosts of the past. These are not the helpful ghosts foisted on Scrooge, but rather the memories and reflections we have built up over a lifetime of December 25ths. These might be childhood traumas, deaths, break-ups, illnesses or arguments. They could be wonderful tinsel-wrapped reflections of childhood happiness, visits from Santa, or loving embraces from grandparents long since departed.
Be they good spectres or bad, there’s a lot to process. There are a lot of… feelings. Combine this with the astonishing number of “shoulds'“ we’re told to swallow, and this is a time of year that emotions are stretched to breaking point. It’s little wonder people often argue at Christmas. I read once that people tend to either get angry or cry when overwhelmed (there is often a gender split on this one…) - so perhaps it’s time we normalised the Christmas weep.
This is exactly what we’ve done in my group of close girlfriends - after we joyously discovered this always happened to us every year. Messages fly around when it happens. One of my girls went early this year - overwhelmed by the pressures of solo-parenting a young and excited child. “I’ve had my Christmas cry already!” she messaged triumphantly, with several days still to go. Another went on Boxing Day, overwhelmed with emotion as the family departed after a harrowing few years of personal tragedy. And I went yesterday - merely sad, unwell, lonely and disappointed.
Thinking back over the years, ‘twas ever thus. I have an embarrassingly large store of memories of being comforted by my mother as I wept in the bedroom even as an adult. Mostly I can’t remember why - apart from the memorable occasion I shouted at my father for being anti-feminist. Or the time I was so crushingly depressed I couldn’t even open a present. But usually it’s just the pricking of a bubble that’s been inflated by expectations, memories and exhaustion.
So perhaps it’s time to normalise this - and make the Christmas Cry part of your celebrations every year. Maybe if we resist it less, and view it as a cleansing of our emotions, it could even be a positive thing. I’ve often felt this time of year should be more about peace, rest and reflection than getting shit-faced on Baileys and going out with plastic antlers on every night. Perhaps if we accepted this instead of running away from it, Christmas could even be a time of healing.
But it’ll never catch on. So eat some more cheese, glug some wine and have a good cry instead.
Curious about this one… am I/my friends insane? Or do you relate…? Have you had your cry yet…?
Well, I managed to hold it together despite how dismal Christmas was this year (read my last post). I attribute my poise to the fact that I've pretty much been dead inside since my son passed in 2020. I guess that's one of the silver linings...nothing penetrates me anymore. 😁
I'm so sorry you spent your holidays sick and sad. I hope things look up quickly!
No cry for me yet! My mother (who is the most triggering person in the world to me and generally bullies the shit out of me while alternately moping) interloped upon my precious family beach Christmas vacation, thus inspiring rage which I kept at bay with Benzos (the only justified usage of the drugs for me = my mother is around). Those evil little pharmaceuticals certainly kill any bothersome feels.... which is why I’ll be throwing the bottle away as soon as we leave this beach! Perhaps then I’ll have a cry....