What To Do If Christmas Doesn’t Fill You With Joy, But With Sadness?

By this point of December, amid the turkey and the trimmings, the Mariah Carey warbles and the tear-streaked viewings of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, you can’t move for being awash in good feeling. But what do you do when the idea of going home for Christmas fills you not with excitement and anticipation, but with trepidation, sorrow or angst?

It’s been an interesting week to read seasonal newspaper round-ups: among the usual top 10 films, sexy stocking-fillers or what to get for the man/woman/friend/nan/dog/goldfish in your life, are more reflective tales of the hidden pain experienced by scores of people at this particularly poignant time of year – even if most of them never dare voice it.

I cried when I read Kerry Hudson’s raw account for The Pool about how to deal with Christmas Day when you’re estranged from your family. “When asked over the years about where I’d spend Christmas, I always stuttered out vague answers and eventually found it so uncomfortable that I simply started lying,” she wrote, referring to research by Cambridge University and estrangement support charity StandAlone, which found that 90% of the estranged people they surveyed found Christmas to be the hardest time of year. 

I had a lump in my throat when I looked at Brigid Delaney’s Guardian account of how lonely it can feel to be convinced you are the only person around you having a bad time.

“It’s a week until Christmas, and I think, not for the first time at this time of year: ‘Hello darkness’,” she wrote. 

“Christmas’s shrill, tinselly message of togetherness and family often acts as a reproach to those who are feeling sad or lonely, or who have suffered loss, bereavement or some other sort of existential shock.”

And I found painful solace in J L Hall’s piece about wanting to hide from the world in December, which for her marks the unwelcome 12-year anniversary of tackling her parents about their abuse. 

“I have newly surfaced after taking to bed for the day, as I did yesterday,” she wrote. “I decided to seek cover, to tug the duvet around my ears, to switch my brain into sleep mode until the memories eventually cease, for another year.”

While I haven’t experienced bereavement, abuse or estrangement, the words of these brave writers daring to tackle the Christmas ‘happiness myth’ rang all too true.

Three years ago, on 25 December, I sat slumped over the dining table at my parents’ house, newly pregnant, my mind shrouded in darkness. Physically, I felt awful – morning sickness had stretched to feeling like I was on the rolling, heaving bow of a ship on a tumultuous sea, 24/7. I couldn’t eat a thing. The smell of roast potatoes made me want to vomit.

My only respite? Small sips of sparkling water. Bon appetit!

Emotionally, the sea inside me was just as rough, if not more tempestuous. I was having a hard time dealing with my status as mother-to-be for the second time, nervous about what it would mean for my mind, my emotions, my ability to deal with the strange and solitary confinement reserved solely for new motherhood.

I’d been there before, in 2012, with all of the associated loneliness and loss of identity that left me scarred. And scared. I felt overwhelmed – and never more so than at Christmas, when all anyone could talk about was my impending and inevitable joy.

Sorrow did turn into joy, six months or so later – but it was a difficult pregnancy. I begged the midwife to deliver my baby early by C-section, because I was suffering from the benign yet excruciating pregnancy-related condition PUPPP – an itchy rash that left me scratching my skin so violently I was left raw and bleeding.

My son, now, is my joy. As is my daughter. But at Christmas, more so than any other time of year, I’m reminded of how lonely – and alone – it felt to be sitting at that dining table. How helpless and how vulnerable I was, and how impossible it felt to tell anyone how I was feeling.

Time passes. Time heals. I got through it. You will, too.

So if your main goal this Christmas isn’t to have ‘the most wonderful time of the year’, but simply to survive, remember this: it’s okay. You’re not alone.

See you next year.