What Christmas means to those without a family
First Published on Medium
I have a specific image of a 90s Christmas that plays in my mind on repeat.
An old Christmas hits vinyl is spinning in the background, the Radio Times laid open full of listings circled in blue ink with the blank VHSes on hand to record them. The old TV advert of the kid who stands on the Yellow Pages so he’s tall enough to kiss his crush plays during every ad break.
On the sofa, my dad has his notebook out on his lap, ready to make a list of who got us what for the obligatory thank you cards, while Mum charges in and out of the kitchen stressed about the food all while wearing a reindeer ears headband. My sister and I, as per tradition, shower the tree with decorations in no godly order, just like that scene in The Princess Diaries when they throw paint balloons onto the wall.
I had loved this Christmas a kid. Ridiculous PoundLand decorations, watching Miracle on 34th Street as a family, the sight of the tree all lit up as we went to sleep.
In 2009 however, the Christmas when my Dad had started to cough (a cough which would, a few months later, turn out to be the cancer that killed him), something felt off. By this point, we had found ourselves in an unspoken agreement that the magical nostalgia of Christmas, the version where my sister and I had to stand on a chair to place the star on the tree, was over.
We had reached the point where the effort needed to keep up that magic for a family with two children approaching their 20s had become tiresome and sad. Sticking to the same traditions we had always had, but now feeling like we had outgrown them.
For the next few years after my dad passed away, Christmases just didn’t make sense anymore. They were forced, quiet. The sofa had an invisible weight to it, the audible absence of snoring an hour into the Christmas Eve film, a heavy silence after a present was unwrapped as if we kept hoping for the sound of a pencil scratching a notepad.
Sometimes, I spent Christmases with friends and their families instead, relishing being able to keep up the pretence again because there was a kid there, with conversations confirming Father Christmas’s existence between any two adults within earshot. All those little things; the crackers, the board games, the terrible jokes, they all felt so joyful. Home, on the other hand, meant absence, and awkwardness.
Once absence is felt, it either settles as the new norm or spreads everywhere like a river burst from a dam spilling over land. For me, detaching further and further from that 90’s picture of our family felt natural, even necessary.
Years later, following the changes our family went through and the difficulties that came with them, I took a step back from my relationship with my mum, who lives in France now.
The past few Christmases have been spent with housemates, or, more recently, alone.
As Christmas is often exclusively about family, for those without that like me, it can feel like a day of loneliness magnified.
I’ve had Christmases where I’ve tried whatever I can to avoid that reality, and I know I’m not alone in that. Many others spend the day avoiding the television for any film that would inevitably show a whole family gathered together. Some avoid it further and never even set up a tree, never let themselves count down to the day. Some will secretly add a few extra days to the advent calendar in their head, counting down to January.
I’ve had those Christmases. Those were, unsurprisingly, some of the worst ones. Try as you might, you can’t go anywhere, or open up your phone, without being reminded of what you don’t have.
December would stretch out like a lifetime, with any glimpse of a tree all lit up through a window would be a sad reminder of what I had lost.
But fortunately, with age, I found a better way of navigating it.
Like any sadness, I’ve found that it will always be better to let yourself feel it, rather than avoid it.
Whether my housemates are there or not, I now commit to cooking a full Christmas dinner — with full extravagance (last year, that meant caramelised chestnuts). I’ll purposely watch a film that reminds me of my childhood. That clip of Judy Garland singing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas will find its way onto any screen. I’ll sit down and take it in as a gentle anchor of nostalgia.
I’ll allow myself to listen to the music, to call friends or my sister. If I have the urge to connect, to share an image of my dinner table, I will let myself do it. No self-imposed restrictions.
It will always hurt a bit, sometimes it’ll be overwhelming. Often it will make me cry a little, but it is a good kind of cry.
It’s a reminder of some of the really beautiful things about life — things that are worth pursuing, worth waiting for.
And as it comes along once a year, it’s a reminder that circumstances can change, there’s a whole other year to work on for a different Christmas ahead. Perhaps my family will come back together again for that one, or perhaps I’ll have a new family to share it with. I long for either, but am in no rush for them, and won’t compromise my own life’s journey to achieve them quickly, especially as I have come to truly appreciate those moments I have to myself at Christmas.
There’s actually something quietly special about those moments, something that I don’t think you have the time to reflect on when everyone is bustling around. It’s a unique kind of tranquillity that can only really exist on a day that’s all about spending time with others.
And there will be many of us this year feeling that loneliness or that tranquillity. Some at the difficult beginning of that journey, and others accustomed to it who will find it easier to bear.
That’ll be me again, planning on cooking a delicious orange duck roast with The Nutcracker on at full blast.
And though I won’t have a family to pull a cracker with, it’ll be just another special, random and wonderful day of the year. That is something worth being grateful for.