Bah, Humbug!

 I don't like Christmas. 

There, I said it. I've committed heresy, possibly the biggest one I can. Christmas has become such a huge tentpole in our calendar, so associated with happiness that it really does feel like it's a crime to dislike it.

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Partly, the reason I dislike it is that it starts too early. Here in the UK, you see Christmas items in the shops as early as September. That's usually just as the "back to school" tat gets taken down but before the Halloween stuff gets shelf space. Christmas Carols can be heard as early as the start of November, which is usually when the deluge of seasonal adverts for shops invade the media, in whatever format you're watching or listening. The world and his wife tries to convince you that they're more caring and "Christmassy" than the next brand over, in what feels like a rather hollow exercise in "us too, we love Christmas!"

Towns and cities fill up with Christmas markets, making them crowded and noisy. I'm left bewildered by the fact that the exact same stalls, selling the exact same stuff litter the high street and nobody complains. I appreciate this may be a memory problem - that I do remember what was there the year before - or just an autistic "thing", not understanding the comfort of seeing familiar goods on display because I was ambivalent in the first place, but I'm left flummoxed by the fact that the markets aren't one hit wonders. Once you've seen one, you've pretty much seen them all, after all. 

The same is true of Christmas lights, which are garish, ugly, and in your face so much it's painful. I don't see the value of them, and am only left wondering how much they contribute to the Climate Crisis or the local Council's electricity bill (or the bills' of households who set up big displays). I'm aware there's some hypocrisy involved with this - as I type this I have a heater on and I know that's not doing the planet any good. Then again, that's not a huge display covering the front of my entirely hypothetical house. I'm not blasting light into the night, letting them flicker in a distressing fashion. 

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I suppose this gets to the heart of my issue with Christmas. It's so bright and shiny, and hollow. It feels fake. We buy things people don't need for a celebration that largely seems to be for children and upon which Jesus of Nazareth wasn't born in the first place (as far as we know). It was a syncretised celebration, placed on the date of another god's - Mithras - birth and conveniently close to Saturnalia in Ancient Rome. It's also close to the Winter Solstice, which is handy for cosmological reference. In other words, it's fake and it's always been fake. 

This fakery extends to lives and emotions. Don't feel sad, or cross, or upset! It's Christmas, it's your duty to put on a big smile and pretend to be fine so that other people can also pretend to be fine. In turn, their friends and co-workers will pretend to be happy and it's just fake emotions all the way down. 

You can see this also in the amount of stress families go through and the staggering debts they run up to make sure everybody gets presents. It's there in the emotional labour that parents (usually Mums) put themselves through, getting everything ready, striving for perfection even though that's impossible. The myth of the perfect Christmas is as poisonous as any other and as a culture we drink that down and expect to walk away fine. This pressure adds to already difficult circumstances, tempers fray and unkind things are said. It's no wonder that Christmas is actually when a lot of couples break up. 

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We add to that stress by hauling ourselves around the country to see family, subjecting ourselves to long traffic jams or delayed, crowded, trains. Trusting our bodies to be resilient enough, then plunging ourselves into the performative space that of a family gathering, spending time with people with whom the only thing we have in common may be a surname. It all seems a wee bit mad to me, especially when the world outside sends a clear message; rest, recharge, hunker down and be slow. What odd creatures we are that at a time when every other animal in the northern hemisphere knows winter is a time to preserve your energy, we commit to running around like lunatics. 

Going back to the planet, Christmas puts an extra toll on it. Production surges for things that are... fripperies at best. The journalist and campaigner, George Monbiot, claims that most Christmas presents end up in landfill, and has said in the past that the Billy the Bass toys killed a river thanks to discharge from a factory. I'm not sure that the environmental cost of providing things that we don't need is worth it in the long term. 

Setting aside the external factors, which feel overwhelming and "too peopley" as well as provoking environmental guilt, there's an emotional factor too. The emotional fakery mirrors the historical one. 

I hate the feeling that I have to put on a show, playing pretend to make everyone happy. It's loud, bright, and leaves me feeling exhausted and scraped raw. It's so unhealthy to pretend problems don't exist instead of working at them, but that's just what we do to keep the peace. I hate the feeling of enforced rest, where that means stuffing your face with food and doing nothing. My favourite Christmas was one where I built Ikea bookcases and listened to Poirot mysteries on BBC Radio 7 (which shows you how long ago it was). Even now, I'd rather do something practical than just "be sociable". For one thing, that gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

These days, I do my best to avoid the busyness and bustle. I like the peace and quiet of spending the holiday alone, and seldom bother to do anything special. Taking time is the important thing, giving myself the gift of stopping. I just wish other people took that opportunity too; time and energy are far more valuable than a present. 

Weirdly, I am going to wish you Happy Holidays, but I wish you a peaceful, quiet one. Take care of yourselves and don't kill yourself rushing around. From one heretic to another, you're worth more than that. 

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