Edel Coffey: Christmas brings with it a whole lot of pressures
Stylist magazine recently described the particular flavour of stress that comes with December burnout as a ‘crucible’. Picture: Nick Ansell
Last week as I hurried past a shop window on Grafton street, I caught sight of my stressed head reflected back at me from the festive window, as a snatch of song floated through the shop doors: ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year.’
It suckered me like a punch.
This did not feel like the most wonderful time of the year, I thought as I rushed from the toy shop back to my car so I could make it home to the other side of the country in time for the school pick up.
Who was having fun here? Sometimes the run up to Christmas instead of feeling wonderful can actually feel punishing.
I tried to shake it off, tried to get into the spirit of things. Because I am one of the lucky ones. I will celebrate Christmas in my own home this year, with my loved ones. We will be warm. We will have too much to eat.
I remind myself of this when my energy is low and my concerns about how I’m going to get it all done are getting the better of me, or when someone walks right through me on the street or screeches into the parking space I was carefully and politely reversing into.
Stylist magazine recently described the particular flavour of stress that comes with December burnout as a ‘crucible’. It feels like the perfect word for the confluence of pressures that start to bear down on us as we approach Christmas.
The Christmas crucible is a grinding place of non-stop noise and interchangeable to-do lists. Once you tick something off, another item takes its place. And the crucible really comes into its own this weekend, the last weekend before Christmas, the final opportunity to get your last few bits of Christmas shopping done (or to begin, as the case may be for many of us).
You’ve probably been in town since 8am this morning. You might even be reading this column while gridlocked in a carpark, wondering if your parking ticket will still work by the time you finally get to the exit barrier.
But the Christmas crucible starts to grind as early as October and it doesn’t give up until the final metal shutter is pulled down on the last remaining shop on Christmas Eve.
Every little thing adds to the pressure. Christmas postal deadlines whizzing past our heads like broken bits of meteorite. There goes the US, always so much earlier than anticipated. Next comes Europe. I’ll be lucky to get cards to people living in Ireland at this rate. Often I write them all in a frenzy but fall at the final hurdle, neglecting to buy stamps in time to post them.
Oh well, they’ll be ready to send on December 1 next year.
As the days telescope down into each other and you go from telling yourself you have plenty of time, to downgrading the handpicked and meaningful presents you had intended to buy for family and friends to bulk-bought scented candles for all, the pressure really starts to pinch.
Those final days of work are thwarted by the out of office email bounce-backs from those people who are more organised than you and appear to have finished for Christmas on December 8.
There are other pressures thrown into the cauldron.
The pressure to make Christmas magical, the pressure to go big or go home on your outdoor lighting decoration scheme, the attendant financial worries and the expectation that you will be your most sparkling, delightful social self, dressed up to the nines and available for every and any coffee/cocktail/party invitation that comes your way.
Throw a flu or a cold into the mix just for good measure and you’ll probably just be approaching the full effect of the Christmas crucible.
By the time Christmas rolls around, I’m usually crawling over the finish line, a sparkly dress flung onto me like the tinfoil cape they drape over exhausted runners at the end of a marathon.
Worrying about getting work finished, finding the time to buy presents which you can afford, figuring out how you’re going to manage the cooking times so that everything stays warm. i
It means Christmas is happening just as it’s supposed to.
Busyness is part of Christmas and it’s worth remembering that this time next week, the stresses will hopefully all be forgotten. Everything that really needs to be done will have been done and whatever has been neglected or forgotten or messed up will melt away into the category of unimportant or unnecessary.
Come Christmas Day we will hopefully have emerged relatively unscathed from the crucible and be sitting in a warm room with a glass of something nice and a Christmas film on the telly. There may even be a fire and if you’re very lucky someone you love, and who loves you right back, sitting next to you.
Sometimes in the crush of the crucible it’s easy to forget that the rest is just noise.
