Phew! And rest...
Christmas is A LOT. Be kind to yourself this week.
Monday 6th January 2025, 9:26am. I’m drying off from a soggy school run and reaching the end of my coffee. Deri has gone to the gym. The kids are all back in school. The house is eerily quiet and surprisingly tidy after a (frankly Herculean) effort on our part to pack up the Christmas decorations last night.
I’ve opened my laptop and pulled out the to-do-list of things I transferred over on December 20th when it became clear they weren’t going to be pre-Christmas achievements. I could do to crack on, and I wish I was feeling more inspired by the dawn of a new year, but I’m just, what sums it up best?….exhausted.
December is A LOT. The multiple dress-up days, send a bottle, support the food bank, buy a raffle ticket, watch the concert, go to the fete, buy the presents, wrap the presents…you know the drill. Then there’s all the making: meal-making, magic-making, memory-making. And all with the backdrop of your kids steadily getting more over-excited, hyperactive, and - let’s be honest - dickish.
A (young, childless) guy at the gym asked me casually the week before Christmas if I was winding down yet. I nearly spat my water over him. DOWN? There is no down, Jacob. There is only winding UP.
An emotional magnifying glass
We watched That Christmas on Netflix. It’s a lovely animation with several relational themes running through it, and a nice dose of humour - just as you’d expect from Richard Curtis really. But this one bit has stuck with me:
I always think that Christmas is a bit like an emotional magnifying glass.
If you feel loved and happy, Christmas will make you feel even happier and more loved. But if you feel alone and unloved, the magnifier gets to work and makes all those bad things bigger and worse.
Whether it’s as simple as feeling loved or unloved, I’m not sure. But it does seem to be true that the Christmas period makes everything feel that bit more. This maybe explains why some people dress their house top-to-bottom in electric lights or spend days preparing meals for family and friends whilst others pack their suitcase and escape the whole thing in favour of a sunny holiday.
Wherever you sit on that spectrum*, be kind to yourself by recognising the additional emotional efforts of the past few weeks.
Being ‘all-in’ on Christmas can mean holding unhelpfully high expectations. You need to keep it magical and create that feeling for everyone around you. But, that pressure can easily turn you into a maniac who is juggling so many balls that they keep waking up at 4.30am to check they haven’t dropped one.
If Christmas doesn’t do it for you, perhaps there are historic reasons why. Emotions that usually have a safe spot to rest can get shaken up and brought to the fore. Or, if you’ve lost loved ones, the ‘happiest’ times can also be the hardest. All of that can end up floating around your body and getting in your way.
* If you read my earlier rant about the M&S advert and the elf, or you popped to mine this year and saw the 5’ tall wobbly gonk in my hallway that I lugged back from the Christmas Ideal Home Show, you’ll have a decent idea which side of this coin I land on.
This is all to say, if you are feeling ‘less-than’ today, I think it’s no bloody wonder. Me too.
New Year, same you…for now
N.B. If you are currently feeling inspired to get healthier / go to the gym / start pottery / whatever, maybe don’t read this bit. I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm. Good for you, you go girl (or boy, there are some of you on my subscriber list!).
I’m really not on-board with new year resolutions.
I’ve written before on why new year resolutions suck. The overarching theme was ‘you won’t stick at it anyway and then you’ll feel worse for being a quitter as well as not half a stone lighter’. I was challenged at work to make a 2025 resolution and, when I refused on this basis, my colleague suggested that doing something for a couple of months was better than not doing it at all.
That’s valid, and certainly more ‘glass-half-full’ than my perspective. But I think there’s a more fundamental problem.
It’s just not the right time.
Well, certainly not in the UK anyway. Outside it’s grey and drizzly. And cold. I’ve lamented how much I dislike British Winter before - here - but I’m only just noticing the disjoint between our artificial calendar and the calendar of nature. I feel the latter should be our guide. Notably, the Christmas madness has no respect for it.
In winter, nature turns to rest and stillness. Trees are bare, with their energy drawn into their roots. Most animals either hibernate or slow down. They accept - and embrace - a period of dormancy. We shouldn’t see dormancy as an absence of growth, but an essential phase of renewal.
Spring will come. Already, beneath the frost, bulbs are gathering their strength and buds will be forming on seemingly lifeless branches. One day soon, I’ll spot some snowdrops on that walk to school and I know they’ll make me smile.
When the world outside starts to stretch awake, I think I’ll be ready to as well.
For now, I need to rest and recover. It’s been a lot.
