Blog: Christmas~Choose YOUR Happy

I originally wrote this blog back in 2019, and I was just going to edit it to today’s date, as I have done the past few years. But, then I got to thinking that I want to add some other musings, things that have just solidified my thinking about what celebrations can and ‘should’ be for each of us, especially times like Christmas, when it is all around us, saturating everything we see, do and hear. Equally, what I am about to say though could also be applied to any festival or celebration, religious or otherwise, or indeed any milestone. So, here’s to the revised edition of choosing your happy at Christmas.

A few years ago, several things happened in quick succession that were the spring boards for the original blog. The first happened when I was sitting in a cafe , looking at my purse, which was on the table with my coconut milk hot chocolate. I was daydreaming but also listening to people around me, and it struck me…..choose happy! It was there, right in front of me, written on my purse. It was such a simple message to write and read but often so much harder to do.

For some people, their happy is putting 100% of everything into the festive period and I say, if that’s for you, do it and enjoy it. If you want to put up your Christmas Tree and decorations in November, wrap your presents in September or go hunt your own Goose, go do that. If you live for the John Lewis advert to appear online or on the Telly, then let me know, because I love that too! And, if decorating is your thing, do it and make it glittery; colour coordinate too, if that’s your thing. If you want to play Christmas songs in August, do that; and if you want to grab and gobble the first mince pie that you see in the shops in October, that’s absolutely okay too.

However, sometimes, and for completely valid reasons, we can find life difficult or sad, and our capacity to choose happy at this time of year can be significantly and understandably diminished (but not necessarily extinguished). I have, in recent years, become so much more aware of this since my Mum died and a few short months later, my Nana died, leaving me with a much smaller family and no Grandparents left. My Dad lives abroad, and my partner’s Mum and Dad are dead and struggling with significant mental health issues respectively. Christmas for us looks very different now than it did perhaps 10 years ago, and definitely 3 years ago.

In these situations, or in the circumstances of illness, family fallouts, children with additional or trauma experienced needs, financial crisis or other challenges, we can often feel compelled to be sucked in by other people’s ideas of what Christmas and other events and celebrations should look like, rather than what we want them to look like for us. Be it social media, advertising, shops, work, friends, colleagues, family, everyone seems to have an idea of what we should and should not do, be, eat, give, see, decorate, visit etc etc. But for me, and many of you reading this, that just doesn’t fit our physical or emotional energy levels any more, or traditions we once had feel empty without the loved ones we did them with. Or (hears audible gasp and pearl clutching as she writes) Christmas might just not be your thing. And. That. Is. All. Absolutely. Okay. It is okay to sack them off altogether; it is okay to make new traditions; it is okay to do things smaller or different.

In our house we do a mix of all three things. Some Christmas traditions that I once held dear are just not the same without Grandparents or my Mum, who was THE ultimate Mary Christmas! We’ve also made new traditions like going to the cinema on Christmas Eve because we no longer travel to see family, and I’ve recently enjoyed singing at events with my choir, who probably have a ‘branch’ near you, if singing is your thing. And, instead of cooking a whole Christmas dinner, we do something different and go out on Boxing Day instead.

Both of my children have additional emotional needs due to previous experiences with their birth family. That means we do things smaller sometimes for them too. They are also different in their approaches too. For example, one of my sons decorates his bedroom so it looks like Christmas threw up in there, whilst the other son just hangs a bauble with his name on it on his wardrobe door; both are doing what works for them.

However, sometimes, outside of life events, we also actively choose NOT to choose happy, again often because of a misguided sense of responsibility, or custom, or expectation. And around the time of writing the first edition of this blog, I witnessed several examples of why this is often no truer than at Christmas:

In the same shopping trip that I embarrassed myself by laughing out loud at a lady asking her friend if she liked ball sacs (it wasn’t what she said at all, obviously, but thankfully they found it funny when I had to explain why I was laughing) I also overheard this conversation……..
Lady: I suppose we should get some sprouts for Christmas dinner
Man: Why? We don’t like them
Lady: But it’s Christmas, you’ve got to have sprouts at Christmas
Man: Yeah, I guess so
So, up they picked a bunch of sprouts (bunch, pole???), which they spent money on, which they will spend time peeling, crossing and cooking, and then which will probably end up in the bin.

Then a few days later and on a similar food theme (well, it is Christmas after all) I told a friend that we were having beef and pork for our Christmas dinner. ‘What, no Turkey?’ came the incredulous reply. ‘No’, says I, ‘we don’t particularly like it’. We had to agree to disagree that I hadn’t in fact just p*ssed all over Christmas! I dare not have told her that we actually also bung the meat in between two slices of bread with stuffing, all accompanied by a bowl of dipping gravy, because I think her world would have ended.

Then, the day after that, whilst sitting in the coffee shop , I heard two women talking about all the gifts they still had to buy and how so and so has given them something so they have to get them something back, even though they don’t want to. This was in a similar vein to someone last week telling his friend that they were having a guest to dinner that they didn’t want to invite.

None of these people were or are happy about the choices they were making, they knew that their happiness at Christmas would be impacted upon, but they were and are making those choices anyway.

I’m not in any way judging, because as you know, I truly believe that you will and should do what you choose to do.

But I do have just one question.

Why?

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we choose all of this angst over choosing happy and having the kind of Christmas we want to have?

When we got married, we didn’t have flowers, bridesmaids or a photographer. We had balloons, one page boy and we gave everyone a usb stick to download their pictures on to and give back to us. We even went and played crazy golf in the afternoon with those who wanted to come. And, whilst some people questioned all that, we did what we wanted and had fabulous day, the kind of day that was perfect for us, and someone even commented it was one of the nicest weddings they’d attended because it was so relaxed. The photos we got back were also amazing and really captured our day.

Like weddings, Christmas really is just one or two days but we run around preparing for them like our lives depend on it. And, often, this goes beyond preparing to have a nice day. It often creates stress, anxiety, worry, rows, bad feeling and chaos.

I’ve always found this meme both funny and poignant at the same time. I love the last point and it makes me laugh but the first two points just resonate with me so much. I first came across this in 2016 and since then, sometimes precipitated by grief, sometimes because our children are older now, and sometimes because it’s just too much to think about, my partner and I have made so many different choices about the kind of Christmas we have, and we LOVE it. No one has fallen out with us, and the world hasn’t stopped turning. We’re happy little elves doing what we want to do, and at peace not doing what we don’t want to do. We see friends and we go out, but we have also 100% sacked off the things we don’t want to do.

I’m not saying be mean to people, or be a miser or a grumpy bah humbug, that actually goes completely against what I’m saying I fact. But why choose to do things, buy things and spend time with people we don’t want to do, buy or see of it’s going to make you, and maybe them, unhappy?

Have a stop and think today about what you’re planning, buying, eating, doing and seeing. Is it making you happy or are you making choices out of convention or guilt? What will happen if you make different choices in a healthy way?

Will the world end? No, probably not. Will it make you happier? Quite possibly

So, here’s a change around of the words from the image at the top of this blog…..

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