I sometime imagine myself dragging my spirit through mire in the last few weeks towards Christmas, whispering encouragingly ‘nearly there, nearly there’.
It’s not about Christmas itself, which I enjoy and try to make as laid back as possible. It’s about the increasing darkness beforehand.
I’m not entirely sure when this really kicked in. As a child, I recall not really liking winter. The highlights were Christmas plays, carol concerts and the massive family dinner put on by my great aunt. Winter as a teenager is a bit more of a blur because duh – hormones warp your priorities. I have two main midwinter memories. One is being in the school choir with the music teacher coaching us in a new arrangement of The Holly and the Ivy and trying forlornly to get us to pronounce ‘choir’ à la Queen’s English (e.g. to rhyme with ‘hire’) rather than in the local South Welsh accent (in which it rhymed – just about – with lawyer). The other is about turning up at the fifth form Christmas disco to find my best friend more or less wearing the same outfit and the boy of my dreams not noticing me yet again.
At some point in adulthood however, I realised that going to work in the dark, coming home in the dark and – given the nature of some of the offices I’ve worked in (same career – lots of roles) – working in the dark wasn’t doing a lot for my mental health. As the days grow shorter, so does my attention span, my enthusiasm, my mood and my desire to be awake. They improve as Christmas nears and multi-coloured lights start to brighten houses that hitherto seem shuttered as firmly against winter as they would be against wolves.
At some point of course, I realised that I probably suffer from low level seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
Moving to the equator or hibernating aren’t options. Recognising how I feel, looking it in the face and knowing that around Christmas I’ll start to feel better has helped me focus on the finishing line rather than the race. However imperceptible, I know that as the last Christmas leftovers are being eaten up and I’m starting to get annoyed with the decorations, the days will be getting longer and I’ll be starting to feel better.
It’s not been quite so bad this year because my November, which is usually when I start to feel low, was supremely busy. I was heavily involved in the first literary festival in my town. I also had Murder Durnovaria to get out. I’m not sure I had time to even notice the change in light until I was on the other side of the festival and found myself heading to my day job in the pitch dark. Then I was starting to droop, staring blankly at editing I need to do on a novel and wincing at my total lack of preparation for Christmas.
Christmas itself isn’t an issue. I grew up in a family which enjoyed Christmas but was never excessive about it. There weren’t many presents, but we ate well and spent several days being creative or reading without anyone expecting anyone to do something else instead. I’ve tried to continue that relaxed tradition with my own children. And after the year when I had to buy the entire Christmas meal on Christmas Eve and the world didn’t end and I realised no-one would have cared if we’d had spaghetti bolognese instead, I’ve been able to go with the flow about the food too.
Not every Christmas has been happy of course. Several have been clouded with a broken heart or a death or the shadow of serious illness and the mood has been less about a dizzying blaze of multi-coloured light and more about standing fast in a darkness illuminated by one defiant lantern – which for many is the whole point of the season. This year for me, the certainty that I’d got over the worst of SAD and simply needed to order food and persuade my slightly Bah Humbug husband to put decorations up and everything would be fine was knocked sideways by news I wasn’t expecting and which is currently still hanging over everything.
If like me, you find the last dark days of the year hard to bear, or if for you this Christmas or Christmas in general is difficult because of other people’s expectations, or you don’t buy into the hype or you’re alone and/or grieving, I’ve put some links below which you might find useful – some for support, some for ideas.
But I’d just like to finish on a note that’s not doom and gloom.
I finally persuaded old Bah Humbug to help put up the decorations on Saturday. Naturally, no sooner was I ready to go than he decided to put up a new curtain rail in our daughter’s room instead – a job which had been waiting since September.
Long story short, I threw up my hands in irritation and stormed off to assemble fake Christmas trees on my own.
I got Christmas trees 1 & 2 up (different rooms) and extracted the lights for Christmas tree 2 from their box. Half way out of the box, like sneaky serpents they spiralled into a hyper-granny-knot.
Having finished fitting the new curtain rail, my husband came to see what I’d been up to while he’d been ‘slogging away’ making a boil out of a pimple.
He tutted.
‘Now you see these lights,’ he said sagely. ‘What’s gone wrong here, the reason they’re tangled, is that you, being an impatient woman, pulled them out of the box the wrong way. As a patient man, I shall untangle them and put them on the tree. Stand back and watch the master at work.’
I left him wrestling them into submission while I did an internet search to establish whether Vlad the Impaler ever deployed a fake Christmas tree and if so how.
History is mute on the subject. It may yet be rewritten.
Words and photograph copyright 2019 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.
Some ideas for doing something entirely different at Christmas
Coping with Anxiety and Depression at Christmas
Depression at Christmas – a Survival Guide
Lovely post, Paula. Have tweeted. Hope everything is okay with you! Sending hugs if needed! 🙂