A Shit Christmas
By Geoffrey Clow | A Twinkling of the Soul Article
Let’s skip the bullshit, shall we?
Christmas is supposed to be magical. Warm. A time for family, for gratitude, for whatever the ads are selling this year – matching pyjamas, perfect prawns, children who don’t melt down and adults who don’t drink too much and nobody crying in the bathroom.
For a lot of us, it’s none of that.
For a lot of us, December is a minefield with tinsel on it. The temperature rises, the carols start, and somewhere in your body a small alarm begins to sound. Not excitement. Dread.
What You'll Find In This Article
The Christmases I Remember
Christmas morning smelled like burnt toast and stale beer. Dad’s chair was already pulled out from the table at an angle, which meant he’d been up long enough to start. Mum was humming carols off-key in that way she did when she was trying not to cry yet. The prawns were already sweating in the heat. So was the ham. So were we.
It wasn’t stockings and wonder. It was the sound of Dad opening a beer before 9am and Mum overcompensating with the good tablecloth. Standing in the hallway, rubbing sleep from your eyes, trying to guess the forecast from the way he shut the fridge door: gentle meant safe; slammed meant run.
The TV was already on too loud. Ice clinked in a glass before noon. My hand hovered over a present – not from excitement, but calculation. Was it safe to make noise? To seem happy? Would happiness set him off or would he ignore us today?
We had both kinds of Christmas. Sometimes in the same afternoon. One minute everyone’s pulling crackers, the next minute someone’s said the wrong thing and Dad’s up from the table with that look in his eye – the one that meant you kept your head down and didn’t make eye contact. The one that meant something was about to get smashed.
Mum’s smile was so wide it could crack ceramic. Wrapping paper stuck to the bottom of my foot. The carols kept playing – Bing bloody Crosby crooning about white Christmases – while we tracked Dad’s movements like prey animals watching a predator circle.
You learn to flinch at sudden movements and loud voices, even years later, even when the danger is long gone. A door closes too hard in a supermarket and your hands still move before your brain does. And you learn that Christmas – the whole glittering, suffocating fantasy of it – is not for people like you.
The Ghost at the Table
Here’s the other thing nobody warns you about: sometimes the hardest part of Christmas isn’t who’s there. It’s who isn’t.
Grief doesn’t check the calendar. Grief doesn’t give a shit that it’s December 25th and you’re supposed to be eating ham and pulling crackers and pretending everything’s fine.
Her chair is still the one no one chooses. Even now. Three years later and we all navigate around it like furniture, like a piece of geography that’s just always been there. Someone puts a bowl of chips on it and my stomach drops.
She made the pavlova. Every year. Refused to buy one because “life’s too short for bad meringue.” Now someone else brings dessert – shop-bought, always shop-bought – and nobody says anything but everybody notices.
Three years ago, I lost my person. The one who made it make sense. And now every Christmas is a room full of people who aren’t her. I catch myself looking for her in the kitchen, expecting to see her wiping her hands on that tea towel she always threw over her shoulder. Hearing her laugh that isn’t there. Reaching for the phone to tell her something funny someone said, and then the weight of it lands in my chest again – that dull thud of remembering there’s no one on the other end anymore.
You don’t move on. You just grow a life around the crater and learn which angles hurt less to look at. Some years you’re fine and some years the supermarket Christmas aisle – the carols, the tinsel, the smell of cinnamon everything – makes you cry in public and you have to pretend you’ve got something in your eye while strangers judge your trolley full of wine.
It’s fine. Everything’s fine.
The Impossible Arithmetic
So here’s the calculation, if you’re someone like me:
Option A: Go to Christmas. Sit through the loaded questions, the passive-aggressive comments, the uncle who drinks too much and says things, the aunt who asks why you’re still single or childless or whatever you’re supposed to be ashamed of this year. Perform gratitude. Smile until your face aches. Leave feeling worse than when you arrived, jaw tight from all the things you didn’t say.
Option B: Don’t go. Stay home. Protect yourself. And then spend the day marinating in guilt because you’ve “abandoned the family,” because “it’s Christmas,” because somewhere inside you there’s still a kid who wanted it to be different and feels like a failure for giving up.
Neither option is good. That’s the point. There’s no right answer when the question is broken.
And the lines. God, the lines.
“You know Christmas isn’t about presents, right?”
“When are you bringing someone home?”
“You look tired, dear.” (Translation: your face is telling the truth and I would prefer it did not.)
“Why don’t you just let bygones be bygones?”
“It’s Christmas, can’t we all just get along?”
“Your father’s made a real effort this year.” (He hasn’t.)
“I just want everyone to be happy.” (Said while making everyone miserable.)
You try to explain this to people who had nice Christmases – the ones who actually like their families, who have good memories, who don’t understand why you’re not “excited” – and they look at you like you’ve got two heads. “But it’s family,” they say, like that word means the same thing to everyone.
It doesn’t.
Permission Slip
Right. Here it is. The thing I wish someone had told me twenty years ago:
You’re allowed to skip it.
Seriously. You’re allowed. The world will not end. Lightning will not strike. You are a grown adult human being and you are allowed to say “no thank you” to things that hurt you, even if those things have tinsel on them.
You’re allowed to:
- Not go
- Go and leave early
- Go and leave very early
- Develop a sudden, suspicious illness on December 24th
- Book a camping trip to somewhere with no phone reception
- Spend the day alone and enjoy it
- Spend the day alone and not enjoy it but still prefer it to the alternative
- Eat cheese on toast for Christmas lunch straight from the pan like a degenerate and call it a spiritual awakening
- Take a drive with the windows down and scream-sing to music nobody admits they like
- Watch a movie that has nothing to do with Christmas while eating cereal in your underpants and refuse to feel profound about it
- Cry into the void
- Not cry and wonder if you’re broken
- Feel nothing
- Feel everything
- Tell exactly no one what you’re doing
You’re allowed to build something completely different. Something that’s actually yours. A Christmas that doesn’t require you to shrink yourself to fit into someone else’s dysfunction.
The obligation you feel? The guilt? That’s programming. Someone installed that. It’s not the truth – it’s just old software, running in the background, chewing up your RAM.
You can update it.
If You Have to Go: A Survival Kit
Alright. Sometimes you can’t skip it. Family pressure, kids involved, complicated logistics, whatever. Sometimes you have to walk into the blast zone with your eyes open.
Here’s what I know:
Park facing out. Always. Ideally under a tree where no one can block you in or corner you with a Tupperware of unsolicited leftovers. Your car is your escape pod. Treat it accordingly.
Have an exit excuse ready. Pre-loaded, chambered, safety off. “I’ve got to check on the dog.” “I promised I’d call someone.” “I have explosive diarrhea.” The more uncomfortable, the fewer follow-up questions. Have it ready before you walk in. You probably won’t need it. But knowing it’s there changes everything.
Find the dog. There’s always one. Usually under the table, usually smarter than everyone else in the room. Dogs don’t ask why you’re still renting. Dogs don’t have opinions about your life choices. Dogs are pure. Sit with the dog.
Lower your expectations to the floor. Then dig a trench. Don’t go in hoping it’ll be different this year. It won’t. Hope is a setup. Go in expecting it to be exactly what it’s always been, and then anything above that is a bonus. You’re not there to fix anyone. You’re not there to heal old wounds. You’re there to get through it. That’s the mission. Nothing more.
Drink water. Boring, but true. If you’re going to drink alcohol – and let’s be honest, you probably are – match it with water. You want to stay sharp enough to read the room and sober enough to drive away when you need to. Nothing worse than being trapped because you’re over the limit.
Have a person on standby. Someone you can text from the bathroom. Someone who knows where you are and why it’s hard. Not for rescue – just for witness. Sometimes you just need someone to reply “jesus christ, that sounds shit” and suddenly you can breathe again.
Time-box it. Decide in advance how long you’re staying. Two hours. Three. Whatever you can handle. Set a timer on your phone labelled “You Can Leave Now” and pretend it’s a medication reminder if anyone sees it. When that timer goes off, you go. “I’d love to stay longer but I have to [pre-loaded excuse].” You don’t owe anyone an explanation. You don’t owe anyone your whole day.
Give yourself a reward. Plan something for after. Something that’s actually good. A movie. A bath. Takeaway on the couch in blessed, merciful silence. Something to look forward to on the other side of it. You’re doing a hard thing – you deserve a prize.
Sometimes the best part of Christmas is the ten quiet minutes after you leave. Sitting in your car in the driveway, or around the corner where no one can see. Hands on the steering wheel. Engine off. Just breathing. Breathing like a human again. That moment is yours. No one can take it.
The Shit Christmas Club
Here’s what I want you to know:
You’re not alone in this. You feel alone – God knows I felt alone for years, thought I was the only one white-knuckling through December while everyone else was having a lovely time. But that’s a lie. That’s the Hallmark industrial complex doing its job.
There are millions of us. People with drunk dads and absent mums and families that looked fine from the outside and were war zones on the inside. People eating lunch alone in empty apartments, cold roast chicken over the sink, while the neighbours’ carols bleed through the walls. People who’ve lost the person they loved most. People who can’t afford presents and feel ashamed. People who have nowhere to go and no one to go with. People sitting in cars in driveways, gathering the courage to walk inside, or the courage to drive away.
We don’t talk about it because we’re supposed to be grateful. Because it’s Christmas. Because “family.” Because if everyone else seems to be managing, the only thing left to blame is you.
Nothing is wrong with you.
Your experience is real. The dread that starts building in early December – that’s not weakness. That’s your nervous system remembering what the holidays have cost you. The tight feeling in your chest when the carols start in the shopping centres. The way your shoulders climb toward your ears at the first mention of “family plans.” The stomach drop when someone asks “what are you doing for Christmas?” and you have to assemble your face into something that looks like normal. That’s not broken. That’s survival. That’s your body doing its job.
And if this Christmas is shit – if it’s lonely or painful or just fucking hard – that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’re human, and you’re surviving something, and that counts.
One More Thing
If you’re reading this and thinking “I can’t do another one like the last one” – listen:
You’re allowed to build something new.
It doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s Christmas. It can be small. Quiet. Weird. Just you and a book. You and one friend. You and a beach and a meat pie. A long walk at dusk when the heat finally breaks and the streets are empty and the light goes golden and forgiving. Whatever.
It’s yours. Not the ghost of Christmases past. Not the performance for people who don’t see you. Something that actually fits.
It might take a few years to figure out what that looks like. It might feel strange at first – the guilt, the weirdness of breaking tradition, the voice in your head saying you’re doing it wrong.
You’re not doing it wrong. You’re doing it differently. And different might be exactly what you need.
Merry Shit Christmas, everyone. May your exits be clear, your wine glass full, and your chosen family within texting distance.
We’re going to get through this.
If the holidays have you struggling and you need someone to talk to, Twinkling of the Soul offers trauma-informed support that won’t judge your Christmas choices. Because sometimes “I survived December” is the only resolution that matters. Feel free to get in touch here.
