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Family dynamics, logistics, the expense and pressure from every angle can add up to make Christmas a challenging time. Right now, we’ve got a massive case of post-Christmas blues.
For most of our life we loved Christmas and always got in the festive spirit. This time, we’re left feeling numb. We don’t need everything to be deep and meaningful but Christmas felt like a sad little puddle not even worth splashing in.
We try to live our life with intention, and encourage the kids through their home education and unschooling to question the way things are done. So at the end of Christmas day we put on some cathartic progressive metal, drank port and tried to figure out how and why do we still do this thing called Christmas.
After our reflection, we basically felt like traditional Christmas can fuck off back home on the donkey it rode in on. In true Christmas Carol fashion we lay it on the table. Fear not, it’s not all doom and gloom. We have a plan moving forwards but first lets head to…
Christmas can fuck off back home on the donkey it rode in on.
Christmas past
Growing up in Christian households, attending Church of England schools with the odd Christingle service, nativity play, carol service and occasional mass on Christmas eve or Christmas day were significant parts of our family celebrations.
Neither of us are religious now. We don’t believe in God and certainly don’t buy into the idea of any organised religion. However, pre-children, we’d sing in carol concerts and found the experience comforting and nostalgic despite our lack of belief. We loved the music and had fond memories of church at Christmas.
As children we were both taken to see Father Christmas and asked what we wanted; there were presents under the tree at home; Christmas films on TV; a yummy Christmas dinner with our immediate family; and sometimes family parties in the days that followed. All in all, it was a lovely experience but perhaps unsurprisingly our relationship with Christmas has changed; particularly since becoming parents.
Quick fact check on the history of Christmas
Advent calendars and all the marketing hype build everyone’s expectations for the best day of the year and this apparently has something to do with baby Jesus. Even if Jesus was real and lets just say he was the son of god…. his birthday almost definitely wasn’t the 25th of December.
Christmas has some roots in ancient Roman celebrations which were nabbed by the early church in Rome during the 4th century. The specific date of December 25th was chosen to coincide with a festival, Sol Invictus.
Christmas is not based on any historical record of a Jesus’ actual birth date. So modern the date in our calendar is arbitrary. With that in mind, the pressure for the perfect celebration on that one specific day seems ridiculous.
Christmas present
So what is Christmas to us now and does it mean anything to the kids?
What are we doing here?
It’s been a long time since we truly believed in the christian faith but churches are beautiful old buildings which we hope will always have a place in the community. So just before Christmas, we took the children to our local church for a carol service.
During the service we were peppered with the following questions; amongst lots and lots of wriggling:
- “Why are we even here?” – “To celebrate Christmas with our neighbours.”
- “Why is he talking AGAIN?” – “The vicar’s reading part of the christmas story, from the bible.”
- “Is Jesus even real?” – “Some evidence suggests he might have been a real person, but we don’t personally believe he was God.”
- “So it’s just a story?” – “Yes, we think so.”
- “A nice story?” – “Well… not really. Leaving a heavily pregnant lady (impregnated without her consent) left outside in the cold to sleep with cattle because there’s no room at the inn seems pretty harsh. The mass infanticide by King Herod isn’t exactly uplifting either.”
- “Why are we listening to this story again?” – “Some people celebrate Christmas because they think Jesus was born to save them.”
- “Is that why we celebrate Christmas?” “No.”
We got thinking… apart from seeing the lovely people from our community, what exactly are we doing here?
By Kenny Meadows – Illustrated London News, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46578023
Father Krampus
We took Francis to see Santa when he was a toddler. He didn’t sit on his knee and cried the whole time and obviously knew it was a bit weird even then. Our kids said they find the idea of someone coming into their house in the night quite scary.
Use of the story’s naughty and nice list as a manipulative tool to make children obedient is something we consider to be pretty shitty. It’s not a fun story for everyone. Despite this, our lot generally like the idea of a magic and generous Father Christmas. However, we never said he is real and always discussed it as a story for those reasons.
We’ve watched films and read stories about Santa. We’ve talked about different “Santa” figures throughout history and the world – St. Nicholas, Krampus, Odin etc:
- St. Nicholas was probably an awesome dude and is known as the patron saint of prostitutes, thieves and children amongst other things.
- Krampus, on the the hand is an evil spirit that would torture children who ‘didn’t behave’.
- Father Christmas was basically a pagan fairy of mis-rule.
All these ideas combined with a splash of multinational conglomerate branding and BOOM… you have Santa! History Hit’s Betwixt the Sheets podcast about Santaphilia is a good listen and goes in to more detail if you want to know more. (Don’t worry, we haven’t played that to the kids.)
We’ve had conversations that other children believe Santa is real and it’s a ‘game’ some parents play. Recently, concerns were expressed to us that our kids might expose the lies and “ruin the magic” for others. We had a chat and asked them to talk sensitively about this with other children. The same goes for other people’s religious beliefs and opinions.
Other than being a story we whip out at this time of year, we feel like Santa along with his shitty little jobsworth friend, The Elf on the Shelf, can do one.
Winter wonderland
It’s not all bad. One thing we love about the festive period is celebration of the season. Brightening the dark days with twinkly lights and decorating the house with evergreens when the landscape is barren has always been a joy. Marking the solstice and celebrating the coming of longer days feels like a natural thing to do. However, the obsession with a white christmas feels cheesy and somewhat ridiculous. Even more so when you consider that Jesus would have probably been born in Palestine in the Middle East and half of Planet Earth experiences summer at Christmas!
We don’t get a lot of snow here normally but we find a great beauty in the morning frost, dormant trees and the magical power of dragon breath in the cold air. They’re nice little meteorological surprises rather than something to expect and be disappointed about when Christmas Day is a luke warm 13°C. Getting outside no matter the weather has been great in helping us process this slump of post-christmas blues. We even had a spontaneous winter barbeque.
Gifts
In the absence of any other meaning, this year Christmas felt like it became all about the presents. The children were asked what they wanted, and on the whole they got it; and some more.
They woke up earlier than us, went straight to the Christmas tree and opened the presents. Then we saw family and opened more presents. Although, not all of them, because there were too many. The kids were still opening presents three days after Christmas. No one needs that many presents! Not only did they get overwhelmed – we did too.
Our house is now even more full of stuff that doesn’t have a home and we have to find a place for it. Louise, with her recently diagnosed ADHD, spent the best part of two days standing in the middle of the house completely paralysed by the size of the task. The third day was spent rearranging the cupboards to make space for vast amounts of new things, combining older toys in storage boxes to free up space for new ones. On cure, the kids pulled it all out we were stood back in the middle of chaos.
Gift giving can be lovely and we’re very grateful that anyone would give anything to us and our family.
We spent a lot of money. Our family spent even more. But why?
What if we spent a fraction of that, and went on a little holiday together? Or invested the money into something and all benefitted? Or, if that amount of money was truly superfluous, give most of it to charity?
One thing we have done for the past few years is make a token effort for others in our community that are less fortunate. We delivered a big shop of Christmas treats to a homeless shelter a couple of days before Christmas. One of the very grateful workers at the shelter said that they get given so much at Christmas but it’s a challenge through the rest of the year. Do we only care about others at Christmas?
Family time
We love seeing our family, but all getting together can be a logistical challenge. We may feel guilt for not being with family on the ‘special’ day. We expect it to be perfect and for everyone to get along without any disagreements. When this doesn’t happen our Christmas is ruined. We’re averaging out at our 38th Christmas… it really isn’t that special anymore.
Even if we were still religious… Christmas was traditionally a feast lasting a few weeks. So, why these days, do we still pile all that pressure into one day? It’s insane!
Let go of expectations and focus on what brings joy.
Naomi and Heidi at Nurturing Neurodiversity
Christmas future
Looking to next Christmas and beyond… We want to take out stuff that means little to us, alleviate as much pressure as possible and retain things that bring us joy. Hopefully this way we can avoid these post-Christmas blues.
Celebration of the season
The most meaningful part of the Christmas season for us is it’s associations with nature.
We’ll probably decorate our house with a tree, holly and pine cones. We’ll reflect on the year gone by, perhaps we’ll make a yule log and burn it on the solstice to celebrate the lengthening days. We’ll continue jumping on icy puddles, walking in the woods, making campfires and doing seasonal arts and crafts.
Ditch the expectations
We will ditch the pressure and anticipation of The Big Day.
We don’t want a big countdown to Christmas, no requirements for the children to open their presents all at once, or wait until Christmas morning to open them (or give them to each other). No expectation that we will follow the traditions of our extended families if they no longer work for us. No requirement to sit and eat a three course meal, lets leave a buffet out that we can all enjoy when we are hungry. Or put a good stew or curry in the slow cooker. They’ll be no need to leave exciting presents at home whilst visiting family when all you want to do is stay at home and play with them. If we get given chocolate, we’ll eat it when we like.
Perhaps we’ll try and make sure we spend time outside during the day (or go for a night walk if that works better) to blow away the cobwebs – but we can be flexible with the rest.
Presents – stripped back and meaningful
Should family/friends be generous and offer to get us presents, we’ll ask for experiences rather than things (or one small thing if they really want to give a physical gift). But how much better would it be if instead of getting a overwhelming mountain of presents on one day, the children had little dates spread out throughout the year with their aunties, uncles, grandparents and family friends.
Ideas that cost very little and will no doubt get easier as the kids get older could be:
- A trip out to a cafe or theme park
- A movie afternoon with popcorn and snacks
- A picnic and games in the park
- Pottery painting at a local arts cafe
- Cake baking and decorating
- A train ride to the city
- Perhaps even giving the kids a choice so there is no pressure to do something that they don’t want to.
There are massive benefits to all by spreading out the fun with no expectation that people should spend loads of money. It fosters quality relationships and creates precious memories instead of the kids seeing family as people that just buy you stuff.
Next December
We’re clearly feeling those post-Christmas blues intensely but it’s unlikely we’ll sail away to a desert island for the whole of next December. Our family and friends will most likely continue as normal. But we hope, as a continued conversation with the children, we’ll manage to remove most of the needless Christmas crap, try a few things differently but still fit in a number of parties, family gatherings and goodies. But there’s one thing for sure, our Christmas Day will be spent together, doing things our way.
Other recommended blog posts to help avoid post-christmas blues
A few blog posts we’ve taken inspiration from:
- Respectful Parenting at Christmas Time – Happiness Is Here
- Have Yourself a Non-Arbitrary Christmas – Naomi Fisher
- 20+ Something You Want, Need, Wear, Read Gift Ideas – The 4 Gift Rule – Simple Living Mama
