Suzanne Harrington: Festive dread? I see you and it doesn't have to be this way

Suzanne Harrington: "Few things are more exhausting than putting on a brave face."

Barely a handful of sleeps to Christmas! While small children, big shops, and Mariah Carey are having their best moment of the year, how are the rest of us doing? Because for lots of people, this week can involve a lot of tinsel-draped tooth-grinding, for all kinds of reasons, beyond the bog-standard slog of it.

For many people, it is not the most wonderful time of the year. To even say that out loud is to be perceived as a killjoy, fun-sponge, grinch, miseryguts, fly in the
festive ointment — such is the pressure to conform to the jollity. You have to be seen to be simply having a wonderful Christmas time, even if you’re not.

You might be the only sober person in the room, hanging on by your fingernails.

You might have to be in the same room as someone you’d rather never see again.

You might have just split with someone and longing for them to be in the room, as everyone around you urges you to cheer up.

Or it might be your first Christmas since somebody died, and you’re struggling.

Few things are more exhausting than putting on a brave face.

Less dramatically, it could just be that you just find the whole Christmas thing a bit much. An introvert’s nightmare. And it brings to the surface all kinds of dynamics we can keep at arm’s length for the rest of the year — in a few days, these dynamics will in the same room as us, across the dinner table. Yet the expectation is bonhomie, magic moments, warmth and hilarity. A Christmas advert come to life. Anything less is a fail. Which is why December sees so many problem page letters popping up in print and online, all seeming to start with “I’m dreading … ”

Festive dread is real, fam. The newspaper psychologists do their best with their earnest responses, but they’re not magic. They’re not Santa’s elves. They can’t undo the ancient psychodynamics we are about to step into, like those giant rats sent into minefields. Treading carefully, hoping nothing blows up.

It’s all there. The unchecked favouritism for one lot of children over another; the hostility between a couple setting everyone’s teeth on edge; two of the group
triangulating against a third, all side-eye and passive aggression; the corrosive banter of someone who, if challenged, goes into wide-eyed, palms-up denial, accusing you of having a humour bypass; the selective blindness to the awful behaviour of some, but not others. Entire constellations of minefields.

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Festive dread mostly centres around the small stuff. It doesn’t always mean having to steel yourself for the blatant racist, the angry drunk, the sexist dinosaur, the religious fanatic; it’s often more subtle. It’s the jokey insult, the condescending comment, the boasting, the one-up-man-ship, the chip on the shoulder, the people-pleasing, the martyrdom. The tired gender roles. The backsliding into personas you’ve long outgrown. Small stuff amplified by time, heightened by festive confinement.

For lots of us, it will be fine. Fun, even. Especially for those of us with small kids around, shining their light. But I do wonder if we haven’t taken a perfectly nice mid-winter holiday — a welcome break in the gloomy depths — and turned it into a bloodsport. So much so, we have people writing to agony aunts expressing their dread at its approach.

We have strangled Christmas with obligation and expectation — we need to make it less insane, and more optional. Am I right?