I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day

I’m aware that I’m very lucky. I enjoy Christmas. And not just the fun run-up, where its all Christmas parties, and wearing Christmas jumpers and meeting up for drinks with friends you haven’t seen since the last Christmas get together. I quite like the bit after Christmas, where you’re trapped in the house with family and nothing to do but watch films on telly and scrape together meals out of whatever leftovers you can find.

As I say, right now I feel very lucky.

There are a lot of reasons why people don’t like Christmas. For some, they are on their own. There’s a tremendous sense of loneliness that comes from feeling like the rest of the world is out there having a party to which you’re not invited. Even if you are someone who normally enjoys their own company, the thing that will get to you is a nagging sense that you could, should be having a better time than you currently are. This is a time when videos on YouTube don’t help. Not when they’re of others enjoying their group isolation, taking the time to sing musicals together, or recreate great sporting moments out of lego, or bake bread out of the flour they’ve somehow managed to stockpile.

Other people don’t like Christmas precisely because they’re not alone. Not every family is the von Trapps, singing merrily together while playing board games and making dresses out of curtains. Most families are the Gallaghers from Shameless, barely tolerating each other’s company and desperate to escape.

The secret to surviving Christmas is to give up all sense of achievement. In the lull between one year ending and the start of the next, its easy to feel trapped by the sense that nothing is happening, by the feeling that you can’t do anything worthwhile until the enforced isolation is over and you can start enacting the self-made promise of New Year.

How many times have the New Year Resolutions been the thing got you off your arse and actually made a success out of your life. If my life is anything to go by, going down the gym and washing the car on a regular basis is unsustainable. Playing board games and watching Netflix in my pants is my true calling.

The reality of being in that interim period where it’s difficult to achieve anything is that your brain still insists you should be achieving something. The reality is that you can’t. It’s not easier to get stuff done with all this time on your hands, it’s harder because the real impetus to achieve is other people.

So in this odd time, when all the presents are unwrapped, the novelty has worn off and we’re just stuck inside listening to reruns of the Queen’s speech and eating leftovers, we need to realize that doing nothing is fine.

For those of you that are out there, on the front line, working through Christmas and fixing this problem for us, we salute you. Just like every Christmas, some people have to stay out there so the rest of us can stay at home.

For everyone else, simply stay at home and be happy. Happiness is contagious. Happiness spreads.

And in a world of contagion, the best thing we can spread is a smile.