Sad, Actually.

5 minute read

I love Christmas. The twinkly lights, the food, the excuse to have champagne in the morning and Baileys at almost any time of the day or night.

But I love it as someone who has had some monumentally terrible ones. Christmases filled with heartbreak, regret, fear, loneliness, sadness and desperation.

Over the years at Christmas I’ve been recently separated and unsure of where I’d be living in the new year. I’ve been mid-miscarrying, fitting in festive meetups around maternity hospital appointments and waiting for the all clear which meant I was officially no longer pregnant. I’ve been sad and lonely, hiding among the dressing gowns upstairs in M&S on Grafton Street so I could sob in privacy before carrying on.

I think people can be at their best at this time of year; generous, warm and loving. But people also often speak about Christmas in sweeping generalisations which are devastating to anyone having anything but a Hallmark festive season.

With rings around my sunken, all-cried-out eyes I have sat in the company of women telling me that Christmas is really only for children. The magic is incomparable. You wait, you’ll see. A week after a D&C, I could have asked them to stop, to think about how they spoke to women in their late thirties without children, but I didn’t, because I didn’t have the energy.

I wandered through town that year, buying presents, stopping to cry every so often, standing on street corners watching groups of friends laugh their way through town and families delight at the lights and windows.

In one busy shop where I stood silently waiting for a lovely girl to wrap something I had just bought, the woman who had served me on the till stopped for a moment, left the impatient queue of last-minute shoppers to return to me at the side of the counter and put her hand on mine. I looked at her and she at me and she nodded a sad smile and gave my hand a squeeze. What she saw in my face I don’t know. Maybe a reflection of her own Christmas past, but it was a kindness too much for my broken heart and I let tears fall freely as I took the gift and left the shop no longer caring who could see my sadness.

It sometimes feels like the last taboo. To be sad at Christmas is to ruin it for everyone else.

You make people worry and feel uncomfortable. Who wants to pull a cracker with someone with a tear-stained face, drinking too much wine?

I have, on occasion, removed myself from the day, to sit at home and have it on my terms, to allow the happy ones to be happy without me. To watch Bond films and lie on the couch covered in a blanket with crisps and the curtains drawn.

Opting out should be allowed. There should be a box you tick that says, not this year thanks. I’m unable to wear a paper hat and a smile. I don’t want to cheer as a single sad flame is encouraged from a brandy-soaked pudding.

Saying no to Christmas is an act of bravery and self-preservation so huge that it should be celebrated, not hidden. It may be the thing that allows you to walk into the new year at all.

You may not think you do, but you probably know someone having a tough Christmas. If they were having a difficult time anyway you can be sure that the festive season is doing nothing to make things any better.

Having had some Christmases like that I know what to look out for now. I keep my eyes peeled for forced smiles and pauses before answers about the big day.

If I see it, I try to downplay festivities, to ask them about something else. It can be hard to even talk about Christmas when you’re very sad or lonely.

Most of all I never say that Christmas is only for children or couples or families. It’s not. It shouldn’t be. You can have whatever day you like with whoever you like. Christmas is for everyone. Or no one.

I know houses that have stopped all adult presents because everyone was flat out buying for kids. Which is fine until you think about the single person in that scenario who will receive nothing on Christmas morning. I know couples who meet halfway along a motorway to hand over children which means one parent is alone on Christmas morning and one on Christmas night. I know people travelling the length of the country to be with family they don’t want to see 51 weeks of the year and could do without seeing now.

We know that in general we shouldn’t pry, ask awkward questions or assume that behind every closed door is a happy family. But something about Christmas makes us all immediately want to know everyone’s plans.

This Christmas, by all means wish people a happy festive season but remember that for some who are estranged from their family, going through a breakup, a bereavement, are lonely or desperate for a baby, the last thing they need to be told is who Christmas is really for.

If you have a friend or family member who seems to be withdrawing over the next week or so, check they’re okay, that this is what they want, and then let them pull the curtains and retreat to the couch. That might just be their perfect Christmas this year.

Sad, Actually.

5 minute read

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