How to have a holly jolly Christmas
And by ‘holly jolly’ I mean ‘emotionally regulated’.
As Whitney Houston famously said ‘I get so emotional, baby’ - especially around the holidays. It took me a while to realise that what I was experiencing was the natural overwhelm that such an event involving high pressure and expectations can bring - and that this is very common.
The ‘family drama over Christmas’ is not so much a stereotype as it is a promise - and it all comes down to the fact that absolutely all of us have our baggage when it comes to December 25th.
A recent YouGov survey revealed that 11% of respondents found Christmas ‘very stressful’ while a further 35% said it was ‘fairly stressful’.
I would consider myself in the latter camp - not because I’m inundated with the responsibility of cooking dinner for a full family or stuck setting up elaborate ‘Elf on the shelf’ scenarios for (in my case, completely conceptual, imaginary) children but because the frenzied energy rubs off on me far too easily. And before I know it, I’ve fall under the spell of ‘needing to do things’ in time for Christmas.
Last year was a particularly difficult one as a month before Christmas, my much loved aunt passed away. My aunt LOVED Christmas. Many of our Christmas plans would often revolve around her coming up to visit us. She’d be first out the gate in sending Christmas cards and often there would be some form of Christmas craft project gifted to you, following a rather ominous text of ‘what colour is your living room again?’. And lord, did that woman love to get everyone together to complete a jigsaw! So after she died none of us were really in the mood for Christmas. None of us felt we could really enjoy it having gone through something so terrible mere weeks before.
I ended up writing a post that year about how done I was with Christmas bullshit; how it annoyed me that we’d seemingly learned nothing from Covid. We had reverted back to mandatory office parties, co-ordinated farcical family photoshoots, and Secret Santa with strangers. Some of those feelings are still there. However, this year I’m more optimistic; more ready to embrace a period of rest and celebration. And I didn’t even need a visit from Dickensian spirits to help me reach this conclusion.
I should caveat here that this will likely be my last post of 2024 because I intend to become a human cheeseboard before I’m forced to deal with January. I am very much looking forward to relaxing without guilt. But also because I think the most important thing to remember about Christmas is that ultimately, you’re the one in control of your own enjoyment.
🎄All I want for Christmas is… rules
Thanks to the excellent recommendations of a few friends, I recently started listening to The Blind Boy podcast (yes I know, I’m late to the party but I do arrive on time to *actual* parties so…) and felt a small lightbulb moment with his explanation of ‘personal rules’.
In the episode ‘The Psychology of Being an Adult’, he discusses the idea of emotional regulation; the ownership and control of our emotions in situations we find challenging and how this is a product of emotional maturity.
It’s a great episode but my main takeaway in relation to today’s post was the idea that we often struggle to regulate our emotions in situations where we feel our own personal rules have been broken or violated. These are rules we set ourselves to live by and work hard to uphold. They may be values we’ve grown up with and had instilled in us from an early age, or perhaps rules we’ve created for ourselves as we’ve learned to make more sense of our needs.
And of course everyone has their own rules. These can often differ from those of others. This is usually where conflict arises as rules can be unrealistic but also, because it’s not always reasonable to impose our personal rules on others.
So when these rules are not upheld, we often revert to the mental state we felt within childhood, perhaps in similar situations where our rules weren’t respected. And this tends to trigger a reaction which is fundamentally ‘childlike’ in nature, and not necessarily always aligned with our rational adult minds. Think anger, tears, lashing out, withdrawing - you know the drill.
It got me thinking that Christmas is a prime example of this. Not just because it’s built almost entirely on personal rules but multiple, collective ones. There’s also the fact that many of our core memories, or at least our ideas about what positive childhood memories should look like also tend to centre around Christmas. We grow up wanting to replicate those good feelings for ourselves and others, or alternatively we try to make up for the times the experience fell short. So naturally, not only are societal expectations are extremely high there’s also a personal toll making stress to meet expectations pushed even higher.
Add in the politics, the financial impact, and all the other drama and pressure that comes with Christmas, then before you know it, there’s tears before bedtime. Arguments at the dinner table. Explosive outbursts of anger. Frazzled, sobbing mothers in the kitchen. Passive aggressive comments from your sort-of-racist uncle. Kids booting off. Siblings bickering. Fist fights in the snow…
And of course, even if you don’t actually demonstrate your own internal frustration to someone else and feel the ‘shame’ of your emotions set loose, there’s still a deep shame brought on by the imperfect Christmas. This is usually compounded by disappointment in yourself and those around you, and grief for your broken shattered ‘rules’.
I don’t have the secret to prevent stress over the festive period, but I can assure you that letting go of some of those personal rules, or at the very least, coaching yourself to react less irrationally when they are broken, allows for a much more peaceful experience.
Foregoing rules you no longer wish to live by
After last year, I decided to let go of a lot of my ‘personal rules’ about Christmas. My main one being ‘I *should* being doing X’
Of course I would never set myself a rule to go to every Christmas party, to bake gingerbread men for my neighbours, or to handcraft a garland with foraged pinecones but I did have rules about feeling obligated to do such things. People had me believing that it wasn’t really Christmas without those sorts of things and the mounting pressure always left me feeling guilty, left out, or like I wasn’t doing it right.
Foregoing rules does come with a price. Despite my grief last year, any time I turned down a request to get involved in ‘festive fun’, it was often implied and sometimes even said that I was ‘being a Scrooge’. When you consider that many people don’t really want to uphold silly traditions for perfectly acceptable reasons (because they can’t afford it, haven’t the energy for it, or find the whole thing really triggering) it does feel a bit mean and presumptuous to roll out the old ‘Bah humbug’ jokes. People forget that Christmas doesn’t always evoke joy for others.
If we learned nothing from A Christmas Carol, it’s that Scrooge had a LOT of Christmas baggage.
But I have stuck by my guns and liberated myself from the things that would have previously caused Christmas-related headaches for past me and honestly, I’m yet to see any negatives.
Here’s a few things I have since released from my responsibility that I absolutely do not miss nor regret;
Attending family events with a family member who I do not feel treats me or others with respect
Stressing out about buying a present for work colleagues I barely know
Buying gifts for people that neither appreciate them nor reciprocate the gesture
Frantic shopping for a Christmas party dress, costing me both time and money
Giving up an evening with my partner or friends to attend Christmas parties that are either lacklustre or filled with HR-baiting drama
Succumbing to the request to wear a Christmas jumper I do not own nor wish to buy
Contributing towards a landfill of discarded Christmas cards
Trying in vain to find the perfect gift for every single person
Ensuring that every day of my festive break is meticulously planned as to not waste my time off
Trying to make multiple Christmas desserts to cover all bases of human taste and preference
Making new rules and traditions
In the process I have set myself some new personal rules - ones that are far more easy-going and won’t send me into meltdown if they aren’t achieved. I do still like Christmas after all - I’ve just reframed my idea of what Christmas spirit looks like.
A few of my new rules…
Putting time and thought into my Christmas decorating ideas - not for the ‘gram, but because I enjoy it. It’s also definitely what my aunt would have done
Ensuring I block out time over the holidays to relax at home without feeling the pressure to see everyone and do everything
Buying, eating, wearing, watching, and listening to the things that make me feel festive AF - and not choosing these things because the internet told me to
And that’s it!
A short but sweet newsletter to end the year but I would love to hear more in the comments about your own personal Christmas ‘rules’ and what traditions you’ll be abandoning for your sanity in 2024.